


The Unburied Demons

by SyfyGuy2



Category: Jackie Chan Adventures, Supernatural
Genre: Alliances, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Magic, Mid-Season, Multiple Universes Colliding, Post-Canon, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 93,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27872998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyfyGuy2/pseuds/SyfyGuy2
Summary: Two years after the Apocalypse ended in one universe; a decade after the demon-sorcerers were banished in another universe. When two evil beings attempt the same spell to escape their prisons, it leads to an evil alliance which will force two heroic families to face their old enemies.
Kudos: 2





	1. An Evil Alliance

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been into Supernatural and Jackie Chan Adventures for years now, and hoped to make a SPN fanfiction for years. I particularly loved Shendu’s demon-sorcerer family, while Supernatural’s Lucifer must be one of my all-time favourite villains in live-action TV. I originally got the idea that became this story around 2015-16, though it was only after I started my serious work on The Storm Hawk and the Dragon that it seemed like it might become a reality.
> 
> In this story’s world, the characters of either franchise exist in separate alternate universes to each-other which can be reached by spellwork. This story takes place in early 2012 in both universes – so during Season 7 of Supernatural; and it assumes Jackie Chan Adventures begins roughly the year it was released, and so it takes place nine years after the finale. It’ll mostly stick to established canon for both universes, but it might get slightly AU in later chapters without any major changes to SPN canon.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fanfiction using the worlds and characters of Jackie Chan Adventures and Supernatural; and I do not claim any ownership of said worlds and characters. They are the property of Adelaide Productions and Warner Bros respectively. This story is my own invention, and it is not purported or believed to be part of either franchise’s canon. I am not financially profiting from the creation and publication of this story; it is for entertainment only and is not part of the official storyline. I am grateful to Jeff Kline, Dong Woo Animation, Eric Kripke, and all associated cast, voice cast and crew who worked on the two programmes; for without either programme, this story would not exist.

** The Unburied Demons **

****

Lightning eternally forked and flashed, no more than five seconds passing in the black void before a patch of its endless expanse lit up, the taut chains glinting though electricity never touched them. Nor did the lightning touched the giant box that the infinite chains held suspended in the blackness, medieval-looking pikes protruding along its roof and bottom’s rims.

Through the stone walls’ grids of X-shaped openings, the lightning cast odd shapes, banishing the darkness to the box’s furthest corners only for it to immediately re-establish itself. Inside, the box was about the size of a modern bedroom, though nothing whatsoever furnished it. There was only a figure in one corner, knees bent in a crouch, grey-shirted back turned to the rest of the dark space. Lucifer would’ve looked almost peaceful to an observing human, eyes closed above his face’s angular nose and cheekbones, the forehead-lines below his light-brown hair almost smoothed out. O was just the likeness of the last-but-one vessel he’d possessed, what limited creatures who couldn’t perceive an angel’s true form would view.

With a proverbial intake of breath, Lucifer’s eyes snapped open, irises shining bright-red before reverting to the blue eye colour, sighing audibly. Raising an index finger, skin unblemished unlike the real vessel had been, Lucifer carefully touched the vertical bar that marked the Cage’s corner – then he began drawing his finger vertically down, leaving a pencil-line of sparkling-blue. Lucifer’s weakness from siphoning his power this way was next-to-nonexistent, though he knew it would be mild once he’d finished the spell. This spell he’d seen his dad use back in the day, before the family disagreements over humans. God would draw a sigil, pouring a bit of his power into it, and open a rift to Lucifer-didn’t-know-where. He’d mainly used it to do away with some of his more tumultuous lab experiments, and he’d pulled it off first try every time – but Lucifer had now been repeating the spell for nearly a year, without result. When he’d returned to the Cage, torturing the little human who’d trapped him had been an _oh-so-satisfying_ time killer – but then his pretty earthly bitch had left, so Lucifer had started replicating his dad’s cosmic-porthole spell. But the spell kept failing, no matter how many times Lucifer drew and powered it, waited a while for his batteries to recharge, then tried again. He could only guess something else was needed – maybe some second power source for the doorway on the other side, or some receptacle it needed to latch onto. Lucifer had tried getting Michael to help, to see if two archangels’ power would hit the bell, but Michael hadn’t said anything to him in a while. So Lucifer had left his brother stewing in his own corner of the Cage, currently invisible to the first five senses, while he tried on his own. The fallen archangel wouldn’t stop trying for long – he only had infinity ahead of him to find an escape from his least favourite pit.

In the meantime, briefly thinking of what he’d do if he ever got back to Earth, a thin smile spread on Lucifer’s human face. Hunting down the ones who’d trapped him would be somewhere on his to-do list – he’d certainly love to see the horror on their faces. He’d probably kill Dean Winchester quickly, he’d maybe try breaking the Winchesters’ pet angel out of his crazy-spell just to break him all over again and _quite literally_ , and Sam he’d do _so, so much more_ to.

* * *

No land, no ocean – just sky in all directions, up and down and left right, the image broken only by the many floating rocks. There was no sun or moon, but the sky cast a reddish-orange glow, suspending the Netherworld in a perpetual twilight without night or day. In that dull light, Shendu’s green scales looked rather dark, whilst his pupiless red eyes shone bright, making the upright-standing dragon-demon look all the more intimidating. But the demon-sorcerer cared little for his appearance now when it wasn’t of use to him - his spike-crowned and tattooed face wearing a savage-looking expression that was close to neutral by his standards, forked tongue hanging above his strong jaw’s gleaming lower fangs. He brought his huge, impressively-muscular arm forward, clawed index finger pointed. To the partially-complete symbol Shendu had carved on the rock, he began adding a new, semicircular line.

This spell wasn’t very remarkable as far as Shendu knew – it was just a recurring footnote across various magical texts, said to enable escape from any prison in the universe. The catch was, it would only work if someone else, somewhere else was performing the spell in unison with the first practitioner. It would be the latest in many spells Shendu had attempted since returning to the void, but with nothing to kill or subjugate, all Shendu had was trying to escape. If not for the benefits of meditation, and the ability to look out through windows to the earthly realm without touching it, Shendu would have wondered how his siblings had kept their sanity in the Nether-realm for a millennium. They certainly hadn’t been happy with him for his inaction throughout their imprisonment, and that hadn’t changed in the nine years since he’d returned here. When Shendu’s siblings had first become aware of his and Drago’s arrival, they’d been eager to sentence him to eternal torment again. Fortunately, with his twelve Talismans restored, this time Shendu could have bitten back _nastily_ if they threw anything his way – and none of them wanted to experience Drago’s bite after he’d combined their eight magics. Which meant Shendu was isolated most of the time – these days, he and his kin if they crossed paths only interacted to take their spite out on each-other.

Soon, Shendu’s claw-tip finished carving the complete symbol, and the demon-sorcerer took two seconds to assess his work. Mirrored pairs of semicircular curves on top with diagonal lines running inside them; the curving lines flanking a shape resembling a staff, and eye flanked by two snakes. Between and below the curves’ diagonal lines, a shape like a Latin ‘w’ enclosed a pair of fleck-shapes like eyes, and a central trio of small flecks, the ‘w’-shape in turn being enclosed by mirrored pairs of lines which formed a trapezoid-like base and legs. Satisfied, Shendu pulled back slightly, jaw firmly closed and fangs hidden as he brought his four-fingered hands together in front of his chest – pinkie fingers interlaced, index and middle fingers crossed.

“ _Jyu ji wan wai dik si hoi mun_ , _jyu ji wan wai dik si hoi mun_ ,” Shendu recited in his hoarse, snakelike voice; “ _jyu ji wan wai dik si hoi mun_ , _jyu ji wan wai dik si hoi mun_ … _Jyu ji wan wai dik si hoi mun, jyu ji wan wai dik si hoi mun_ …” A thin blue energy-current appeared on Shendu’s scales, then a stream of it shot off, taking away a sample of his dark-chi. It blasted and crackled on the rock-carving, then faded. Shendu stood, watching for a reaction. A few seconds passed – then traces of dark-blue lightning forked around the symbol, white light bursting through the carved lines. Slightly gasping air in a hiss, Shendu felt the rock island vibrating under his clawed feet with a tremor. He stepped back, sensing the power building, ears picking up sounds like crackling glass and ripping fabric.

_SKREEESH!_

Wary, Shendu leapt backwards off the rock, a second before a bright flash burst – the Netherworld’s bending gravity made the Fire Demon hurtle in an unnatural curve. Huge feet slamming loudly onto a smaller rock, Shendu righted himself and looked ahead. He stared across a fifty-foot distance at the dark mass on his former island – it was nine feet wide and six feet tall, jagged edges rippling. It looked black inside, but if Shendu looked carefully he could see faint streaks of grey against blackness, angularly sliding in straight lines towards the centre and vanishing, like a screensaver he’d seen on modern computer screens. The way the Nether-realm’s very fabric now rippled, tickling Shendu’s scales, told him exactly what he’d just opened. It was unbelievable bordering on horrifying – Shendu had torn open not just the Nether-dimension but the very fabric of the entire universe. It made the demon-sorcerer gape in astonishment.

* * *

Finishing the sparkling sigil, Lucifer stood, neutral face as cold as early spring in the Cage’s gloom, folding his arms. He only had to watch and wait a few seconds, before white light started shining through the sigil’s lines, snuffing the angelic glow, and seismic vibrations started running through the Cage. His jaw fell by a couple short inches as he slowly paced left, staring while a sound like hissing ice and ripping cloth filled the air. Abruptly, a jagged, horizontal line of blackness split the air and sigil, then it opened up like a gaping maw. Lucifer stared, blue eyes slightly widening. The space-time tear took up almost half the Cage’s interior at nine feet wide, and the jagged edges rippled like it were being seen through water. Inside its borders, streaks of grey travelled against the blackness in angular straight lines towards a centre-point.

The corners of Lucifer’s lips slowly moved upward, ajar mouth forming a chilling smile while thunder crashed and lightning flashed. He took two slow steps forward. Raising an index finger, he very-slowly moved it towards the opening – when Lucifer’s hand went far enough, it started dissolving into pure-white light, high-pitched true voice manifesting around it. Using his angelic senses, Lucifer could barely make out what was beyond – there was an other side as he’d been confident there’d be, like a pinprick of light at the far end of a tunnel; yet from the way certain magics and energies just cut inside the rift’s mouth, it was like it led outside the universe itself. _Like Bizarro-World._ Lucifer smiled widely, staring unblinkingly. Then he pressed forward, into the grey-streaked backdrop beyond the jagged edges. He continued stepping forward into the grey-and-black, until after three seconds, pure-white light suddenly burst off Lucifer to completely fill the rift’s maw with his essence. Then the rift’s edges shuddered and it snapped shut on the Cage.

* * *

Inches in front of the dark tear, Shendu landed with a thud. Draconic face grim, he raised a clawed hand, and reached forward – the moment Shendu’s claw went far enough into the rift, he felt a sensation close to coldness as if every order and energy making up his universe had suddenly ended. It halted Shendu from proceeding further, lower-jaw forming a scowl which a human would’ve had trouble seeing. He wanted to escape this eternal pit, but if this rift led out of the very universe, would it even take-

A bright pinprick suddenly shone in the rift’s dead-centre, making Shendu slightly gasp in surprise before taking a step backwards. The sensitive demon-sorcerer got another sensation – something was pushing against the Nether-realm’s mystical currents near the rift, but Shendu could sense no magic behind it. When the sensation amplified, while the pinprick shone brighter, the conclusion seemed obvious and near-certain – _something_ , though Shendu didn’t know if it was sentient or just a force, was approaching. He leapt into the air, fluidly landing with his Talismans’ aid on a rock fifty feet away. His senses now alerted him to something familiar approaching – but Shendu all but ignored the eight other demons, swimming or diving forth around and behind him.

“Well, well,” growled the slightly-deep voice of a horned and winged demon, who flew diagonally overhead from Shendu and nearly destroyed the rock-platform he smashed his feet into. Shendu ignored Drago’s dramatics. On his left, Bai Tza hissed, mermaid-like blue body suspended in air, hovering high to make up for her shorter height than him.

“Whatever have you been up to, _brother_ …?” the female Water Demon murmured in her high-pitched raspy voice, her unpleasant tone somewhere between patronising and threatening – the Fire Demon suspected his other siblings were experiencing the same mixed feelings as her.

“This cannot _be_ …!” Dai Gui exclaimed as he leapt with a thud onto a rocky platform, the minotaur-like demon’s grating voice awe-filled as he stared ahead.

“But it is…” Hsi Wu murmured, the imp-like demon landing bird-like on the Mountain Demon’s rocky shoulder, before she shook him off.

“ _Hm_?!” Tso Lan cocked his semi-insectoid head in a half-alert manner, while Tchang Zu made a growling sigh behind the Moon Demon’s shoulder, faint light and a ringing sound touching their faces and senses. White light suddenly burst from the rift’s maw in rays, like a star were coming through – the whine rapidly intensified to painful levels. Within seconds, the light was so intense that Shendu cried out and raised an arm to shield his eyes, his brethren nearest him doing the same as the Netherworld’s red gave way to white, and as the noise threatened to consume their senses of hearing. Over the noise, Shendu heard Drago growl, maybe heard him summoning fireballs in his hands, before he too yelled over the sound. The light must have been vast in size, easily dwarfing even the largest demon present.

“ _What_ … _Who_ is this?!” Po Kong yelled, vexed and disturbed. Shendu could barely see his brethren. The light didn’t seem to have a single source anymore, nor did the sound as Shendu turned his head against the whiteness, red eyes squinting – ceaseless light and noise seemed to be all around him, and Shendu felt half the known forces of the universe being pushed back. In seconds, the Fire Demon realised he couldn’t see anything else – no even his lower-body. His ear-drums were near bursting. Shendu screamed, raised his half-visible shadow of an arm in front of his face. Then he acted – aided by his Talismans’ super-speed, strength and levitation, Shendu’s silhouetted blur shot far through the white light in a leaping arc, in what should have been the opposite direction from the rift. Landing in a crouch, Shendu was shocked verging on horrified, as his bipedal body and rocky platform were only half-visible through the whiteness, the noise in his ears barely lessened. And that quickly vanished as whatever undetectable force guiding the light seemed attracted to Shendu, his red eyes widening before white light and noise engulfed everything. Lost in white pain, Shendu was about to attempt verbally talking, but halted when he thought he felt the torment ease. After a pause, sure enough, his vision and hearing eased. Shendu and his rock became visible – so did more rocks further ahead as the light and noise shrunk, then streaks of the Netherworld’s red began enclosing. Seeing the ball of light shrinking, Shendu was both disturbed and amazed by how vast it had been – the other demons’ silhouettes, when they started re-materialising, confirmed Shendu had leapt the seven-mile distance with the Talismans that he’d anticipated, yet the entity’s reach had barely lessened.

Back at the entity’s starting point, where Drago un-shielded his glowing eyes, hints of a shape seemed to be visible as the light got smaller – when the light had gotten small enough that most of the rift’s island could be made out, Shendu could confirm there was a figure with wing-like shapes there. The fading light retreated into a man, or at least something that looked human, giant feathered wings made of the light forming behind him. Only when the formerly-blinding light’s last traces were retreating into the figure’s shirt-clad chest, did the wings start to furl and fade away. The new figure slowly turned his head, scanning his surroundings, while the dark reality-tear behind his shoulders shuddered and snapped closed. Human-like as the figure now appeared without his light-wings and the noise, he took in the eight towering and staring demons with seeming indifference.

Lucifer was _quite_ interested. He hadn’t known what he’d emerge from the rift to, but it was one of the greatest shocks he’d had in half an eon. There were basic earthly laws of physics around him – an up and down, a left and right – but in terms of the higher metaphysics angels could directly sense; space, time and the energies of this world all felt wrong, like someone had stuck reality in a blender and added a couple other things. The other first thing the archangel was aware of, were the creatures looking like a _D &D_ figurine collection come alive. There were eight in front of Lucifer, on hoverboard-like floating rocks. That number changed, when the one who’d fled with superspeed shot off his rock several miles away, a Superman-style speeding pinprick on the sky. He landed fluidly in a green blur atop a rock island amongst the other creatures. Cool blue eyes scanning them, Lucifer noted that the only things the creatures really had in common were a red-glowing pair of pupiless eyes, and differing animal-like traits. The nine beings watched Lucifer with astonishment and caution, appropriately wary that he’d unleash an explosion or something. It reminded Lucifer how this place felt physical, with real solids and gases rather than imitations, but he was standing and moving in his old vessel’s form without an actual vessel – literally all he’d had to do was coalesce himself in a certain way, and his essence had formed a solid human body with clothes. Angular face neutral, Lucifer took two steps forward on his rock-island – almost straight-away, he gave in to the urge to flex one shoulder with a sigh, experiencing the muscle sensations just like he would’ve in a real vessel. Then he stepped further forward, raising a hand slightly and smiling.

“Uh, hi there!” he said jovially. “Or… Lín-hó?” The entities only let the briefest pause pass, quickly sharing looks amongst themselves. Lucifer might have seen the dragon-one smirk – though it was hard to tell with his face – before his rock-board floated forward with him standing straight-backed. Getting a closer look at him, Lucifer saw he was one of the larger of the gathered creatures, all of which were at least slightly larger than humans. His general appearance, with the elongated face’s fin-like whiskers and the markings around his eyes, spoke of eastern culture. He looked to Lucifer like a cross between a tyrannosaur and Godzilla Jr. His body – mainly the arms and broad shoulders – had popping muscles like a bodybuilder would envy. His only garment was what looked like a red-and-purple skirt, with double-jointed legs below and a large tail behind it.

“Greetings, mysterious traveller,” the dragon-entity murmured in a sibilant voice. He put a clawed hand to his pectoral chest, bowing his head. “I am Shendu, Demon-sorcerer of Fire.”

“It appears we have my fiery brother’s spellwork to thank for your arrival.” A toad-like creature prevented Shendu from speaking further, slanted eyes looking from his so-called brother back to Lucifer. Almost-immediately, the toad-creature turned his lilac-skinned body – which would’ve looked emaciated with the gangly limbs, if not for his bulbous, shell-backed torso – to fully face Lucifer. “I am Xiao Fung.” He put a hand towards his underside in a similar bow. Xiao Fung had a guttural voice, razor-teeth flashing between his wide mouth’s lips when he spoke.

“Allow me to extend the greetings of the rest of our family,” murmured the half-man, half-insect creature dressed in flowing robes, a long tongue weaving outside his monstrous mouth as he spoke. “I am Tso Lan of the Moon.” He gestured with one of his larger pair of arms – though his voice was smooth and deep like black ink, when he next spoke he upped the volume for drama. “Our sisters, Bai Tza and Po Kong. Our brothers Tchang Zu, Dai Gui and Hsi Wu. The son of my brother, Drago. We are demon-sorcerers, former emperors of the Earth.” _Emperors of the Earth!?_ That interested Lucifer, though the closest he came to showing surprise was cocking an eyebrow and a lip’s corner up by an inch.

“And you?” asked Drago in a gravelly voice, band-clad arms crossed, tentacle-beard unmoving – he was _at least_ as stocky as Shendu, with similar legs, but his horns and wings looked like Dai Gui and Hsi Wu’s. His tone was gently wary, elongated face neutral. For a brief moment, Lucifer’s face was also neutral, cool blue eyes shifting as he thought very-briefly.

Slowly spreading his arms for emphasis, he smiled and said, “I’m Lucifer. Morning Star, maker of demons, world’s most hated angel, blah-blah – I won’t bore you with the titles.” At the last part, he held his hands in front of himself and smirked.

“ _What_?” Drago all but squawked, uncrossing his huge arms and scowling. Shendu, whose jaws had been unreadably ajar in what could’ve been astonishment or nothing, immediately shot the chimera-entity a glare. Tso Lan and the mermaid-creature Bai Tza only narrowed their glowing eyes very-slightly, and all the entities’ faces became guarded. So, they mentioned _an_ Earth, and apparently Lucifer’s name rang a bell. The plot thickens, Englishmen! Stepping forward on his rock island, Lucifer clasped his hands together and smiled amiably up at his audience.

“So, _demon-sorcerers_ you’re called?” he clarified.

“Yes,” Shendu hissed lightly.

“It sounds like we might be the Sinister Ten in the making,” Lucifer murmured, smirking. “I mean you guys have _demon_ in the name, I _made_ demons back home.” He gestured with a four-fingered upward-facing palm from them to himself at the last sentence. The demon-sorcerers turned their heads, sharing looks as some silent communication went on again, not-so-subtly this time.

“ _Hmm_ … That might come to pass.” Boomed Po Kong. By far the lardy of the litter, the warehouse-sized demon-sorcerer seemed like Miss Trunchbull had eaten a radioactive snack, with her gruff voice and bun hair. Hsi Wu suddenly landed too-close to Drago, making the chimera growl through shark-like teeth at him, though the grey-skinned demon-sorcerer ignored him.

“This realm, you see-” Hsi Wu spread his clawed arms as he spoke in his raspy voice. “-is not our true home.” His large eyes were slightly narrowed, and Lucifer could imagine images playing in one of those glowing orbs. “In the earthly realm, at our full power, our kingdoms’ strength made us matched only by each-other.”

“Until we were banished _here_!” Dai Gui’s voice grated, practically roaring the last word.

“Hm.” Lucifer hung his head, nodding it slightly as he chewed the inside of one cheek. “And you want me to…” He briefly paused for drama, flitting his blue eyes slightly sideways. “-Houdini you a way out?”

“ _We_ cannot break the locks which keep us here by ourselves,” Bai Tza hissed, the tentacle-haired mermaid-monster coiling and swimming in the air like some giant eel, red eyes bright. Her shrill voice sounded oddly like it was being heard underwater without air-bubbles. “But you are an unforeseen factor which our jailers did not expect. We have tasted your alien magic.”

“This realm’s barriers were never meant to hold a being such as you,” Tso Lan said, the flowing-haired demon-sorcerer floating slightly forward. “You can break your way through, and leave the way open for us.” At the last part, he laced his four pale hands together in a business-like manner. Lucifer arched his eyebrows and nodded his hung head thoughtfully, pulling a slight face that said, _Maybe_. After a moment, the expression on his still-hung head turned to a broad smile.

“Help me get this straight, guys,” he said, looking at his audience again, nine pairs of red eyes on him. “You want me to Shawshank you out of here, assuming I can – not saying I can’t.” He said that part quickly, both hands’ index fingers pointed in front of himself. Furrowing his brows, Lucifer made a gesture with both hands like he were balancing scales in either. “…What’s in it for me?”

“My brothers and sisters want you to realise, we have amassed knowledge of a multitude of magics, hidden in ancient archives in the earthly realm,” Shendu murmured, rock floating forward.

“If we were free to reclaim our rightful archives, with our translation, the wealth of knowledge could be useful to you,” Hsi Wu said, wagging a clawed finger, raspy voice dipping into a subtle mischievous tone at the last part.

“Or at the very least, make your transition to our universe much more _enjoyable_ ,” Xiao Fung purred on Lucifer’s diagonal side.

“Hm.” The sound was so quiet Lucifer himself almost didn’t hear it, nestling one arm’s elbow in the other hand while he tapped his index finger to his lips thoughtfully. “Question?” he asked suddenly, blue eyes shooting back onto the demon-sorcerers. “The artist behind _that_ thing-” Lucifer turned as he spoke, wagging a finger at the sigil cut into the rock-island’s central hump. He turned his torso only halfway and his head all the way back. “-he – or _she_. Or any one of you guys really, since you’re all a family team effort.” A two-handed gesture of bringing things together at the last part. “They wouldn’t have anything else that can punch through alternate universes?” Shendu floated forward again, now the closest demon-sorcerer to Lucifer on his island, eyes narrowed as he met the archangel’s gaze in a somewhat serious manner.

“That spell was a mere _footnote_ in my texts,” he murmured. A second pause, before Lucifer let a smile tug at the corners of his mouth, gentle but cold blue eyes holding the demon-sorcerer’s unblinkingly.

“Do we have a deal?” Xiao Fung purred expectantly – the grinning shape of his dark-lipped mouth didn’t look so much like it was just the amphibian facial structure. Blinking once as he turned his eyes, Lucifer responded with a look as cold as winter.

* * *

Though it was early spring, the grey clouds only covered half the San Francisco sky, blue breaking through in patches. A small cacophony of muttering was in the air, seven miles across the cityscape from the Golden Gate Bridge. At rush hour, the bus terminal was packed with people, inside the glass walls and on the sheltered parking bays’ pavements.

“ _JACKIE_!” The round-nosed, square-jawed man winced, clenching the bus route brochure he’d been reading. Turning, he saw the thin, elderly man in a sleeveless yellow fleece, marching through the crowd. “Station shop has no garlic! _Uncle told you to bring garlic_!”

“Uncle, I thought you would stay in the car?” Jackie said, rubbing his nape through his neck-length, wavy hair which was just greying at the temples.

“One more thing: It is _too quiet_ _in car_!” Uncle shrieked the last words, clearly audible over the crowd-noise.

“Well, we can both be here when the bus arrives,” Jackie said, smiling with hopefulness. A pause passed in which Uncle turned his head, looking around.

“ _Ai ya_!” the old man exclaimed, clutching his tousled grey hair with both hands. “It is _TOO LOUD_!” Several heads were turning, making Jackie wave and grin nervously. The younger Chinese man looked at the terminal’s overhead clock – sixteen minutes past ten – then checked his wristwatch read the same.

“It should be here about now,” Jackie said – before quickly looked back at the brochure, re-checking the parking bays.

“Heh! Uncle asks for garlic, shop girl suggests Uncle take _garlic sauce_!” Uncle muttered, arms folded and nose held stubbornly high.

“Perhaps she thought you were looking for a condiment,” Jackie suggested gently, before burying half his face in the brochure.

“Garlic is _NOT_ condiment!” Uncle yelled. He’d been particularly bad as of late, and Jackie suspected the changing season alongside Uncle’s age were responsible. Not four seconds after Uncle’s outburst, a coach pulled in two feet in front of Jackie, and passengers started filing out. Third off was a thin, young Asian woman, wearing a high-waisted purple jacket over a plain shirt with denim jeans, backpack slung over one shoulder. Her light-brown eyes found the men almost-immediately.

“Jade,” they greeted greeted her in unison, smiling. The Chan woman smiled as her younger uncle approached.

“Hey, Jackie!” she said as she removed her backpack, wrapping him in a hug.

“You’ve grown an inch since you last visited!” Jackie quipped, pulling slightly back to look at the woman who stood at his eye-level.

“I doubt it; you’re exaggerating,” Jade said, rolling her eyes, before pointing and smiling. “And _you_ look the same as ever, Unc.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say he’s the same person on the inside,” Jackie murmured.

“Because changed Uncle would not complain about _having no GARLIC_!” Uncle screeched behind Jackie’s shoulder, making the aged archaeologist wince and groan, before resuming his smile.

“You grew your hair long?” Jade inquired, pointing.

“Actually, I’ve been keeping it long for three years,” Jackie said – he nearly put a hand to it, before the ghostly hints of mischief in Jade’s eyebrows and her smile’s corners stopped him. “Er… Tohru is preparing a welcome-home party.” He regained his smile as he said, “You must tell us about your college work in Hong Kong.”

“A welcome back?” Jade said, surprised, before quirking an eyebrow. “He knows I’m only back for the week, right? I’ve still got a graduate course to finish.”

“Well, it has been a while,” Jackie said, smiling.

“Uncle was _very_ firm about making shop adequate for niece’s return!” Uncle said, finger raised.

“Captain Black has even organised a Section 13 welcome-back party of his own later today,” Jackie added, turning to walk with Jade and Uncle.

“He did what?!”

“I hope you don’t mind that we let him in on your return…” Jackie’s voice was lost among the sound of the crowded bay as the three walked back towards the terminal’s glass walls. High above, grey clouds were slowly thickening. A rumble like thunder rolled over the city while white light flashed – not a flickering burst of light, but a serpentine white patch which crawled through the clouds like an eel through marine trenches.


	2. Welcome Back

With the grey daylight, not a single shadow was cast on the sloping street despite the cubic warehouse buildings, as three imposing men strode down. The change in wind was so abrupt, the twenty-something trio’s burly leader with the brush-cut of blonde hair lifted his head, his companions behind his shoulders doing likewise as an escalating wind beat at their clothes. What had started as a cool breeze was picking up rapidly, blowing at their clothes as the wind’s howl rose to a roar – a trashcan was audibly clattering horizontally across the street, the odd autumn leaves were soon whipping about the wind, a parked car began rocking on its springs furiously, causing its alarm to start blaring. Caught in the wind, one of the trio nearly staggered into his partner, when a flash of light and a crash of thunder made their gazes all snap upwards – they saw the vertical lightning bolt in the second it existed, connecting the sky to somewhere behind the nearest building. Nearly two seconds passed, and the winds tearing at the men began subsiding with a thunderous rumble, the car alarm’s blaring gaining dominance while the trio remained briefly transfixed.

“Wow…!” deadpanned the Latino-American man in the sleeveless jacket and knit-cap – initially unnoticed to the trio, a figure emerged from the alley thirty feet away to the sight of them sharing looks.

Stepping towards the audience who’d seen him, Lucifer bent one arm’s elbow and pulled it back, in an imitation of a horizontal dumbbell row. His shoulder almost clicked, just as corporeal as in the Netherworld and still mimicking his old vessel Nick – it made him smile thinly. Though the way Lucifer had travelled through the clouds and lightning had added to his curiosity-fuelled concern over how else this weird new world could be affecting him. He was aware of the men noticing him one-by-one with not-so-safe interest, though their interest only made the archangel want to snicker.

“Excuse me, excuse-me!” Lucifer called rapidly, raising a hand and half-jogging forward, smiling widely. “Can you tell me where I am?” He genuinely wanted to know because, as much as this place looked like San Francisco, to the sixth-and-up senses the underlying layers of this dimension’s reality felt about as different and alien as the Netherworld had – Lucifer wasn’t even sure if the three street-brawlers were real humans.

“Depends what you got on you,” the vest-clad leader growled, folding his large arms. Lucifer’s half-jog broke a few yards from him, the archangel’s current form standing a couple inches shorter. For a moment he looked speechless, then he chuckled; flashing a curled-lip smirk of his own, briefly pointing his nose at the pavement with hands on his sides. Oh, these so-called jocks had no idea who they were screwing with, and he was pretty sure on closer inspection they were quite mortal.

“You know what?” Lucifer said, smiling widely as his blue eyes met the leader’s. “I’m in such a good mood today, I’m gonna give you a free pass.” Still smiling, Lucifer moved to swerve around the trio with a curt, “Bye.”

As he was passing, the curly-haired third man suddenly slid right in front of him, glaring into Lucifer’s eyes in a way he no doubt thought was mean-looking. “You got some spare change, man?” Lucifer was aware of the other two slowly moved behind him to form an entrapping circle, and it made him sigh through his nostrils in disappointment.

“Alright…” he murmured quietly, raising a hand with his thumb and middle finger pressed together.

 _Snap._ The men stood around Lucifer a moment – which became three seconds. Lucifer looked at his finger-snap hand.

_Snap._

Aware of his audience, after a brief pause Lucifer sharply threw his hands out like he meant to throw an energy blast – there wasn’t so much as a crackle of energy. The burly leader behind his back suddenly shoved him, making Lucifer all but collide with the Curls, spine near-horizontal.

“Where’s our money, man?” Bang on-time, angular nose level with the curly man’s belt, Lucifer felt this universe’s elements tug in response to him ever-so-slightly, with a hiss detectable only to his senses. The archangel was chuckling through his teeth as he rose and lazily turned, looking the leader in the eye with confidence and coldness that put the man off _ever-so-slightly_.

“Say hello to my mighty stick.” _Snap._ Lucifer hadn’t been sure what would happen, but had had a pretty good idea – eyes flashed red as a blast of white light tore out in a circular radius, blasting through the men. The leader in front died instantly, his chunky, messy remnants falling to the tarmac with the sound of sloshing liquid. The other two men were screaming as they separately flew through the air, one missing a couple limbs. The curly one conveniently shot straight between two buildings. The two-limbed other one wasn’t so lucky, back of his head smashing into a cinderblock wall and leaving a small blood-spatter, before he fell back to earth. Lucifer turned his head to the other side of the street from the bloody-headed one.

“Oh, man…!” the survivor in the alley exclaimed in terror as he hurriedly got to his feet, bolting in the opposite direction like a scared kid running home to mommy.

“And I don’t ever wanna see you here again!” Lucifer had to shout after the scampering human with hands cupped by his mouth. He watched briefly as the man continued running and getting smaller. The brown-haired archangel turned and began walking.

* * *

The energy-wreathed oval window gave the demon-sorcerers a wide view of Lucifer on the street in the earthly realm.

Drago’s muscular arms were folded, elongated face serious before he spoke towards Bai Tza and Dai Gui; “I don’t trust him.” Physically, the mutated demon hadn’t changed much since his banishment – his double-jointed legs were now more like Shendu’s, and his sloping shoulders made his posture look slightly hunched like his father’s, but he was otherwise the same down to his tattered black-and-grey clothing.

“You would be _foolish to trust him_ , boy!” Bai Tza hissed very-gruffly, swimming across the small space to put her piscine face near Drago’s.

“That’s beside my point,” the chimera-demon cut in, fists clenched as he met his aunt’s glare fiercely – he only raised his voice a limited amount, his temper having calmed with maturity over the years. Drago’s tentacle-beard coiled as he said with his red eyes narrowed, “We’ve got _squat_ leverage against him if he decides to strike out on his own!”

“That is a risk we must take if we are to ever escape this pit…” Xiao Fung murmured, the lilac demon’s gurgling voice grave. Drago was well-aware it still shocked his father that his aunts and uncles didn’t hate the son of Shendu’s guts – at least, no more than they did each-other’s. Since Drago’s banishment, most of the demons hadn’t treated him as anything more or less than another inmate on Cell Block Demon. Bai Tza was eternally a bit tetchy whenever they spoke, like her existence with him would become completely intolerable if he became even loosely like Shendu, and Tchang Zu was the only one who’d made it clear it’d be bad for one demon’s health if Drago ever failed to keep his distance.

“If Lucifer turns on us after the fracture is opened…” Dai Gui began darkly in his ear-sore grating voice.

“…Then we will have a _curtain_ of cover to seek refuge and deal with this threat,” Tso Lan murmured, voice as dark as his flowing hair as he joined his smaller insect-arms’ clawed fingertips. Drago’s face was neutral for a moment, before he gave a slight jagged grin.

* * *

Hearing the shop door’s bell ring as it opened, Jade’s eyes widened.

“Whoa,” the young woman deadpanned. A ‘Welcome home’ sign was hanging above Uncle’s register desk – startled by the sound, the huge man on a small step-ladder adjusting the hanging fell. He hit the floor loud enough to make Jade wince, and make Jackie halt in the doorway – a couple nearby tables shuddered, a glass bottle and a powder-holding coffeemaker falling on their sides.

Immediately jogging to the overalls-clad sumo’s side, Jade said with a smile, “You guys were serious about this welcome-back thing, huh?”

“We also dug out some of your old videogames for the occasion,” Jackie said, smiling.

“You okay, Big T?” She smiled, putting both hands on the big guy she hadn’t seen in nearly three years. Groaning, Tohru turned his head, rectangular glasses misaligned before he readjusted them and smiled widely.

“Jade!” Glasses and slightly-grey hair aside, Jade noted he looked just like when she’d last seen him, down to the white shirt and grey overalls. Both hands under one giant arm, Jade helped Tohru to his feet, smiling. It felt particularly good to see him again. “I’m sorry that the decorations aren’t finished – I wasn’t expecting you to be back so soon.”

“ _AIYA_!” Tohru and Jade both turned their heads, bemused.

Just in time to see Uncle round on Jackie, pointing a finger at his nephew’s chest as he yelled, “You told Uncle we were taking no shortcuts!”

“We weren’t, Uncle!” Jackie defended, hands raised. “I was just driving quickly!”

“You were breaking the _speed limit_?!” Uncle said, eyes bugging in horror.

“Ah-!” Jackie’s tongue caught. “I drive at least two miles below it after what happened in Prague!”

“Uncle knows no such…” As the two continued arguing, Jade shook her head, a smile hinting at her lips’ corners. It was good to be back here, after that way she’d left San Fran three years ago, which in itself brought back some sad memories.

“I ordered some black bean burritos,” Tohru said, turning both their attention away from the bickering men.

“Guess I thought right about not having brunch this morning.” Jade smiled.

“They need to be reheated,” Tohru said, turning and marching towards the kitchen, footsteps thudding. Back turned, Jade didn’t see thin, purple smoke snaking from the fallen Chemex coffeemaker’s paper funnel, the coffeemaker rolling away like a breeze were pushing it before the smoke formed a mini-cyclone. With a flash, the cyclone deposited a child-sized body to the floor. The Chan Clan all turned their heads a second later. The ladybug-bodied creature righted itself, revealing a pale-fleshed, stalk-like torso extending from where a ladybug-head should have been. It rubbed its shrunken blonde woman’s head with a tiny clawed hand.

“Ah, freedom,” the bug-woman rasped in her nasally voice, opening red-glowing eyes, grinning to show off razor-sharp teeth. While the Chan Clan were staring in horror, she leapt into the air like she had springs on her insect-legs, just like Jade remembered her doing.

“ _Argh_!” Jackie grabbed Uncle and fled, half-a-second before the bug-woman landed catlike on the table that had been behind them, knocking over a couple statuettes. She hissed, pencil-thin smoke-wisps rising at her feet.

“Klara!” Jade exclaimed, keeping her honey-brown eyes on the insect-woman while backing away slowly.

“Fräulein!” Klara said delightedly, grinning. “My, how you’ve grown!” Spreading her ladybug-wings, she took to the air above everyone’s heads, buzzing with housefly-like speed as if the humans were actually rodent-size. Gasping, Jade moved sideways a second before Klara would’ve flown into her, the insect-woman shooting into the floor instead. Jade took cover behind a table. Grabbing a shield off the wall, Tohru ran forward. Klara saw him and took to the air, spraying green goo from her mouth. The liquid hissed on the shield, before Tohru yelled and leapt like he meant to ram the bug-woman. Klara dodged peskily, Tohru shooting through air a second before another crash shook the shop. Watching from behind her table-cover, Jade quickly scanned said table’s contents in front of her eyes – vases and a couple vials – then grabbed a particular vial with red powder.

“This better be what I think it is,” she murmured anxiously, shaking the vial with one thumb corking its top. By the front door, Jackie ducked to avoid a ball of acid-spit, which hit and corroded the wall, then dodged another which would’ve eaten his shoes.

“Where is container?!” Uncle shrieked, crawling on all fours under the tables and scanning.

“Hey, Tinkerbell!” At Jade’s voice, Jackie and Klara’s heads turned. Jade swung her arm in a slicing arc, a sparkling-red cloud spraying from the vial. Klara yelled and reeled to escape, but the cloud easily caught up to her. Tiny hands flying to her throat, she gagged and coughed, wings stopping before she fell like a rock. She spasmed on her ladybug-back, legs scratching air. A round-ish lump rose up her torso and neck. Her red eyes bulged as the thing entered her mouth, forcing her lips open around its smooth white surface – she spat the egg out, leaving a trail of clear fluid.

“Meine Güte!” Klara murmured airily, staring in awe. “I am a moth-” She choked, clutching her throat as another egg entered her mouth.

“That’s two, she’ll be up again after three!” Jade said urgently, looking at the Chan Clan. She ducked her head under her table and began frantically scanning – in two seconds, she saw the old coffeemaker lying on its side in the tables’ shadow. She somersaulted over the vase-table, while Tohru was running at Klara.

“ _Jian-ci-ping_ , _jian-ci-ping_ , _jian-ci-ping_ …” Tohru chanted the incantations quickly, an empty glass box in both hands. Klara was vomiting her third egg when Tohru raised the empty fish tank, and brought it down around her – he cut off the chant, Chinese characters glowing on glass panels.

“ _Nein_!” Klara screeched, pounding tiny clawed fists on the enchanted tank’s walls. She glared murderously up at Tohru, then she sprayed acid at the floor, and started rapidly sinking.

“Oh, no,” Tohru groaned, eyes widening before he moved forward. He lifted the fish tank too late, revealing the acid-hole in the floor. Staring, Tohru didn’t notice acid-vapour leaking through the floor behind him, until a vertical spray burst through to make him turn and reel back. Flying out the new hole, Klara glared daggers at him, teeth bared. She didn’t respond to Jackie’s war-cry before his leaping kick knocked her out of the air. Klara hit the floor two feet from where Uncle was crawling under the tables, making the old man gasp. In the same moment, Jackie was hopping about, waving a hand furiously over his acid-burned shoe before he finally tore it off. Tohru didn’t wait for Jackie to act. His deep-throated growl drew Klara’s gaze before she could see Uncle. Glowering, Tohru simply raised his sandaled foot, and kept it hovering above the three chicken-eggs. Klara briefly gasped, then her face contorted in the most murderous expression Tohru had ever seen from her, wings spreading. She pounced.

“Back inside!” Jade’s voice yelled – a blue-and-purple beam shot into Klara’s side, freezing her mid-air. Tohru halted, keeping the chair he’d meant to swat Klara with raised above his head. The bug-woman disintegrated, beam retracting. It withdrew into the coffeemaker’s neck, before Jade slotted the paper funnel on, free hand quickly brushing powder on the nearest table’s edge back into the funnel to re-seal the prison. In two seconds, it was done.

“Uncle has found coffee powder traces! _Where-is-paper_?!” Uncle’s head and grain-filled flat palm popped out from behind an adjacent table, speaking rapidly.

“Relax, Unc, we got her,” Jade deadpanned, smiling.

“Not bad,” Tohru complimented, smiling over at her. Placing the coffeemaker on the table, Jade’s smile was gone as she looked back at the shop’s other occupants.

“I thought you said you were going to put her in the attic?” she said softly, eyebrows knitted and knuckles on her hips.

Jackie rubbed his nape through his long hair. “Heh, well…” Tohru glanced over at him.

“ _My babies_!” Klara’s voice – sounding like it was travelling through water – shrieked furiously, the coffeemaker shuddering in Jade’s hands. Glancing at Uncle, Jade shrugged her shoulders, then pointed the coffeemaker’s funnel.

“Take them too!” The blue-purple energy blazed on the eggs, then they disintegrated into the coffeemaker to join Klara. Then the Chan Clan looked around the shop floor, riddled with acid holes.

“I doubt the insurance covers acid spit,” Jackie murmured grimly. _Whack_. “Ow!”

 _Whack_. “Ow!” Tohru cried.

“No-one moved demon-lady during spring clean?!” Uncle shrieked, suddenly in front of the younger men as they rubbed their foreheads. Jackie opened his mouth- “ _One more thing_. Damage to shop is coming out of _your_ wallets!” The elder chi-wizard wagged an index finger scoldingly.

“Easy, Unc,” Jade said, coming up beside Uncle and putting a hand on his shoulder, while Tohru and Jackie slightly lowered their eyes in shame. “How much do you pay them, anyway?”

“Your skills are still in good shape?” Jackie murmured, and Jade caught the slightest whiff of suspicion in his tone.

“I’m studying archaeology – lots of field trips,” Jade replied nonchalantly, shrugging. “I’ll tell you all about it – _after_ someone’s put this away.” She brandished the smoke-filled coffeemaker.

“We can talk over burritos,” Jackie said, taking the coffeemaker.

“Another thing,” Jade said while Jackie walked off, addressing Tohru; “why do you have a fish tank?”

* * *

The wide street didn’t have more than perhaps two dozen people on it in either direction, even traffic was relatively calm. Still, Lucifer hadn’t even passed the bend of the T-junction he’d come onto the street from, before stopping a Chinese woman with a handbag headed in the opposite direction, asking her for directions. She was momentarily silent and looked puzzled, then her face lit up and she pointed past the bend’s curve, giving Lucifer specifics in Mandarin.

“Xie xie,” he said, smiling pleasantly before continuing on his way. Continuing down the sidewalk, Lucifer’s cool eyes scanning ahead and then right. He was clearly in the Chinatown, where the demon-sorcerers had said the Chan Clan’s shop was located. He thought this San Francisco’s Chinatown was a mile further east than on his universe’s Earth, though he’d have to see it in his universe to be sure.

Lucifer didn’t have to walk more than a hundred-and-two yards – only two more than the Chinese woman had said – before the red-and-yellow building with the ‘ANTIQUES’ sign above its front was in view. It was built at another T-junction’s bend, at the foot of a hill, other houses’ and buildings’ rooftops rising behind it. The shop was three storeys tall at the front, the third storey split into three towers. On the front’s right side (Lucifer’s left) was a red-painted door and large window. A Chrysler LX van was parked outside, and the objects of a junkshop strewn on the pavement. The front’s left-hand side was dominated by a second-floor window, and a building-attached shed was half-visible past the van. Not three seconds after Lucifer had spotted the shop, the front door opened inward and a man in a lilac jumper and beige pants emerged. Lucifer’s jaw could’ve fallen. He recognised the guy’s face, on his Earth it was practically the poster-boy of martial-arts movies!

“So, Captain Black avoided his psyche evaluation by saying he’d had a heart attack?” said a female voice as two more people emerged. First a skinny old Chinese man with tussled grey hair, then a young woman wearing jeans. The last one was definitely what humans would call a _babe_. She was thin, almost scrawny, high-waisted jacket emphasising her helix-shaped torso. She had a heart-shaped face framed by neck-length hair, with thin lips and eyebrows.

“You should ask him about it when you see him,” replied the lookalike Lucifer realised had to be the demon-sorcerers’ so-called nemesis, currently getting into the Chrysler’s driver seat. The voice didn’t match the movie-star’s voice like the guy’s face did. The archangel was still stunned by the resemblance – when the demon-sorcerers had said Jackie Chan was their nemesis, Lucifer had thought they’d meant some guy with the same name. Lastly, a gigantic sumo man wearing overalls and glasses emerged, so large he had to crouch and turn sideways when passing through the door.

“I think I’ll have to,” the woman replied to Jackie, climbing in through the Chrysler’s rear side-door. Lucifer didn’t know whether or not to be grateful he wasn’t occupying a real vessel. He’d once been in a red-lighted swingers’ club, chatting with an old demon acolyte about joining the Apocalypse war effort – his vessel had stayed un-excited for about three minutes before he’d gotten a rapidly-building _tingle_ a few degrees south. The sumo-man and the geezer climbed into the Chrysler’s other seats. Lucifer watched the van start up and drive away. His eyes lingered as the sound of the van’s engine faded, a hand rubbing his chin and jaw below his smiling mouth.

“Oh… my Dad!” he murmured. After a few more seconds watching the van go, during which Lucifer thought about cloud-surfing after it, he turned his smiling face back to the shop front across the road.

The door’s inside-handle turned both ways for a few seconds, before stillness resumed. After a brief pause, a force slammed the door hard enough to tear it from its hinges, leaving the pane to fall forward to the shop floor. Lucifer standing in the open doorframe. That had felt like blowing a paper sheet hanging from a line with his breath. Stepping over the fallen door, Lucifer looked around, taking in the shop’s wide interior. A landing lined all four walls, and the register desk was on the front room’s opposite side. The place was littered with tables of junk, and pockets of it in corners or on the walls. Lucifer strode to the register desk, briefly glancing up the spiralling staircase. Passing the register, he opened the door behind it. Darkness silhouetted him as he stepped into the unlit room. He saw the study desk at the far side and the shelves of books taking up the walls. Raising a hand and concentrating his essence a certain way, Lucifer successfully made his hand shine angel-white, providing some stark illumination as he reached the desk, the high-pitched whine of his true form faint. Then he tried seeing how far this new universe’s Mario power-ups for him would go. He twisted his essence a few times, and as the angelic whine intensified, the beam-lines from his shining hand began _twisting_ , like a flower’s petals curling or like rigid tentacles. The beam-lines approached the desk’s arm-lamp, which turned on with a click. Curling his lip upwards in half a grin, Lucifer let his hand’s light recede. He stared coolly at the bare, well-lit desk. Slowly, Lucifer raised both hands’ palms above it, making slow and soft stroking motions. He could _feel_ an energy, or a concoction of energies, that stained this universe’s spacetime like a mix of varnishes on an old, used canvas. Bits and blobs of similar energy were all around him, on the book-shelves here and there, but Lucifer dismissed those for now. A vertically-standing glass pane near the desk’s corner briefly caught Lucifer’s interest enough to make him look – the bauble-shapes in the patterned glasses no doubt cast several images of Lucifer’s cold face as he looked at it, sensing another bit of magic-energy radiating on it. Standing straight, Lucifer’s brows were slightly-furrowed.

“Huh.” If he wanted to learn a bit more about the Chan Clan’s available-to-humans magic, he’d need more than sniffing leftover musks. Looking with a calm face to one of the stacks of books around the desk, Lucifer picked up the topmost book and flipped it open – using his index finger, he flipped a page every second-and-a-half, eyes almost-instantly absorbing the contents of each page. He guessed after reading four pages that none of the herbal-recipes book’s contents were about magic, and casually tossed it in the air over his shoulder. Grabbing another book off another pile, Lucifer began turning and reading the same way. This book was a bit more to his liking, talking about _chi-spells_ and other magic. After a few seconds, Lucifer slunk into the desk’s chair, crossing one leg over the other, turning pages in genuine interest.

“Hm. That’s one way to turn a demon into a mouse…”

After a few minutes, Lucifer decided he’d read enough and put the book aside atop a random book-stack, grabbing another book. He stopped on the new book’s second blank page, seeing a square photograph was tucked away inside. It was a photo of a shorter-haired Jackie Chan in the same beige pants, and a bald man in a long, black coat – who didn’t look all that happy at the camera – with a child version of the skinny hot woman standing between them and grinning.

“Huh!” Lucifer said aloud. Holding the photo up, he noted it was taken it front of a dirty alley wall, a phone booth in the dead centre above the girl’s head. Turning the photo around revealed ‘TOP SECRET’ scribbled on the back with an untidy underline.

Not a lot of time passed afterwards, before Lucifer’s silhouette was striding into view inside the shop’s kicked-in doorway, walking over the fallen door and emerging into the grey daylight. His unblinking eyes roved as he craned his head, looking left and right in a skyward direction – then he inhaled through his nostrils, closing his eyes with a delightful smile as he did. The scents weren’t far. Thunder immediately rumbled, while winds began beating at Lucifer’s light hair. The grey clouds were twisting and coalescing directly above the archangel’s head as he spread his arms horizontally; thunder grumbling and crackling, while the winds beating his clothes became hurricane-like. Then with a violent _crash_ and a vertical lightning-strike, Lucifer vanished.

* * *

“Captain Black was very fortunate to get out of Iraq alive,” Jackie said as the metal doors slid open, he and Jade stepping from the phone booth before Uncle and Tohru.

“Bartholomew Chang must have been _livid_ watching that hunk of jade get shattered,” Jade murmured.

“Well, that’s what he gets for messing with photon beams.” Jade’s eyes widened upon seeing the black-coated figure in front of them, hands in his pockets.

“Captain Black?” she said. The bald, goateed man was smiling.

“Welcome back, little lady,” he said, removing a black-gloved hand to give her a joking two-fingered salute.

“Hey, you got your hand fixed?” Jade said, noticing the gloved left hand. Before Black could reply, Uncle chose that moment to shriek behind Jade.

“Uncle is _too old_ for being crammed into tight spaces! Why did you not go two-at-time?!” He was shouting at Jackie and Tohru, and Jade briefly wondered if her return had gotten the old man so worked up.

“Just like old times, huh?” Captain Black murmured, and Jade could hear the smile in his voice before she turned back to him.

“So, you finally got Section 13 moved into a permanent new base?” Jade said, looking around the place.

“My bosses thought if we stayed in the same underground base for too long, I’d be due another psych evaluation,” Black said.

“Uncle told you, wood-werewolves emerge on crescent moons, not full moons!” Uncle shouted as Captain Black turned, the Chans following him into the base.

“The new Section 13 is fifty feet below the street,” Captain Black said, leading the Chans under a brick archway towards a rail balustrade. Black sounded proud as he said, “The roof is twenty feet-thick concrete, and there’s no unauthorised communications in or out.” Jade’s eyes swept over the vast bunker space with only mild interest, not as much as she would’ve had before she’d moved back to Hong Kong. It was very similar to the original Section 13 that got destroyed, walled on four sides by rail-guard balconies. Jade was stunned to see life-sized Robo-Mercs fighting fist-to-fist on the bunker floor, a broad-figured scientist that could’ve been Kepler operating joystick-controls at a console. “Chang’s global robot-replacement scheme included a Taiwanese Robo Con,” Captain Black murmured, smiling over at Jade. “We took some of the tech home for testing. You wanna give them a shot?”

Tohru stepped forward behind them, saying, “The last time I saw Jade play Robo-Mercs video-games was the day we-” Total blackness suddenly engulfed them all. Three seconds passed, then the bunker’s lighting returned to life and the Chan Clan could see again. Alarms started blaring as Jade looked about. Red siren-lights were flashing.

“Captain Black…?” Jackie said, troubled.

“That’s the intrusion siren!” Black said, mirth gone. “We’re under attack!” He sprinted along the bunker-encompassing balconies, black coat trailing behind him – Jade and the others were promptly following on his heels. With the speed he was running, he barely stopped himself quickly enough to avoid overpassing a door in the wall, which he immediately went through.

“What’s happening?!” Captain Black said, the Chans’ heads appearing past his shoulders.

“I don’t know, the weather outside just started going crazy!” said the agent at the security monitors. Not two seconds after he’d spoken, a monitor with an angular view of the above-ground street – where pedestrians were running as trash-cans blew about – showed a lightning-bolt blast the ground. When the lightning vanished, a man was standing there who hadn’t been there before.

“Whoa, what in the heck…?!” the agent exclaimed, as the man walked straight towards the barely-visible phone booth. Bright light began shining off the man, and Jade could swear she saw wing-like shapes in the corona-sphere before the image cut to static.

“ _Magic_ …” Jade, Uncle and Tohru murmured in unison. Captain Black was already sprinting back out.

“ _Men_!” he yelled into the bunker, getting everyone’s attention. “We have an unknown, possibly magic enemy at the door! Lock it off and prepare heavy artill-” _Whack._ ” _Ow_!”

“Uncle will say again – _magic must defeat magic_!” the old man exclaimed. Armed agents were rushing forward on the bunker’s main floor in several single files before getting into shooting positions, three gigantic laser-cannons on tank-treads slowly advancing along clear paths. Jade couldn’t see the red-and-green indicator lights blinking above the bunker entrance the Chans had used, the archway having it from their sight – still, the mechanical _thunk_ of the booth-elevator being disrupted was audible, followed by silence.

“Tohru!” Uncle yelled back into the monitor room, just before Tohru rushed out, the old man withdrawing his chi-lizard from his fleece.

“Fortunately, I decided to keep _two_ chi-spells on me today,” Tohru said, drawing a squid-tentacle and a petrified dragonfly.

“Ah – is _very good_ to be prepared,” Uncle said. Silence quickly descended, the rifle-holding agents so still they could’ve been statues, all weapons trained at that archway above the bunker floor. The stillness lasted two more seconds, before the lights began flickering and fluctuating; making Jade crane her head with her jaw open, unstable electronic whirring filling the bunker. When the malfunction stopped, Jade almost-immediately noticed sound was coming from the bunker entrance – metal clattering that sounded very far-off, probably muffled through walls and shafts which the sound bounced off.

_CRASH._

It was as if someone had dumped thirty tonnes of the noisiest scrap metal a-hundred-and-fifty yards away, Jade thought she even felt a vibration through the balcony’s grating. The newfound silence was broken by the ding of the elevator-bell, and the slight but harsh-sounding rustle of metal sliding beyond the archway. It was difficult to tell when the silence ended, and the faint, approaching footsteps began.

“Hold your fire,” Captain Black said quietly and steadily. A brown boot below a denim-clad leg stepped past the brick corner, following by another leg as the figure advanced onto the viewing balcony. Jade took in the man, who didn’t exactly look like a dark-chi wizard or any kind of demon. He wore an unbuttoned grey shirt over a green T-shirt, sleeves rolled at the elbows. He had a slightly-angular nose and cheeks, and the beginnings of a beard growing on his face – his cold blue eyes were shifting, face looking like he was smiling slightly as he observed and seemed to be taking in the bunker. He whistled.

“You guys went full-out with the Batcave idea, huh?” the man said, smiling broadly – he had a slightly nasally voice. Eyes narrowing on the ground floor, he said, “ _Dad-ly cow_ , you even got robots!?”

“What’s it to you?” Jade questioned, which made the intruder turn his cool gaze on her.

“Nothin’ really,” he deadpanned, pulling his lips into a creased smirk and shrugging his shoulders. “I just think… well, it’s awesome these guys have those, isn’t it!” He broke into a grin. Jade kept her eyes unblinkingly on him. She was slightly rusty with fighting bad guys, but this guy was reminding her more of the Monkey King than anything else – she hadn’t met many villains who weren’t all about ominous speeches. “But anyway-” The man waved a hand dismissively, yet Jade got the impression he’d almost pre-planned it. “-dates come first, PlayStation can wait ‘til later.”

“If you’re looking for something magic, you came to the wrong place!” Captain Black said darkly.

“You sure about that?” the intruder said, seeming genuinely surprised as he turned his gaze. “Then what are _they_ doing here?” He pointed and wiggled a hand’s middle and index fingers – straight at the Chan Clan, who were at the balcony ninety-degrees to his own, on his right. The intruder smiled widely, letting his pointing arm drop. “Is it bring-your-kids-to-work day?” he asked mischievously – he was slowly stalking alongside his balcony’s balustrade, to his right.

“Who are you?” Jackie demanded stonily, stepping forward beside Jade – she’d almost forgotten how much he always wanted her to stay out of trouble. The intruder arched an eyebrow, smiling smugly. A pause pass, before he halted halfway across the balcony towards the balustrade’s bend, holding Jade’s and Jackie’s gazes unblinkingly.

“Name’s Lucifer,” he said, spreading his arms slightly for emphasis. Jackie and Jade’s eyes widened. So did Captain Black’s. Uncle only cocked a grey eyebrow. Then those unblinking eyes changed colour, glowing a demonic-looking bright-red. “And you must be-”

“ _Fire_!” Black yelled. Machine gunfire and single shots erupted, and bazookas fired. Jade saw the bullets go into the man, clothing almost-immediately becoming hole-riddled as he shuddered from force. A laser-cannon fired a pink beam. It went clean through the man’s shoulder, in the split-second before the brick-wall behind him exploded, engulfing the balcony in a dust-cloud. A pause passed, in which Jade and Jackie watched carefully. Then they heard a faint, high-pitched whine like a broken hearing aid. A ball of white light was shining through the dust – after a moment, the dust sharply blew apart to reveal Lucifer; arm raised from a completed sweeping motion, white light shining from his body. Jade noted the lines of the light-beams were wavy and bending like an aurora. The light shone particularly-bright from the holes punched in the man, now vanishing to leave him good-as-new. Jade gaped – she only remembered Shendu’s Horse Talisman pulling off a trick like that! The intruder’s – _Lucifer_ ’s – face was unreadably calm. He looked from the Chan Clan and Captain Black, down into the bunker. Some of the closest agents lowered their firearms by a couple inches. Lucifer raised an arm, fingers straight, and with an indifferent wave, he sent a crescent of white light like an energy-wave shooting into the bunker, expanding like a real wave as it left him. Screaming agents flew in all direction as the blast rolled over them. Tank-tread cannons were overturned, the Robo-Mercs and other machinery short-circuited, metal lattices bent and shuddered. Jade gasped, staring with Jackie and Uncle – then, realising not many pairs of eyes were on Lucifer, she turned her head. He was still looking at the bunker, face almost indifferent save for the way he arched an eyebrow and smiled thinly. Lowering his raised arm, he began striding slowly along the balcony again, returning his smiling face to the Chan Clan.

“Jade. Jackie. Uncle. Tohru. Uhh… _Baldy_.” Lucifer said each of their names, almost like he was testing them. He reached the bend in the balustrade too soon – leaving no barriers whatsoever walling him from the Chan Clan. “Now that we’re all on a first-name basis… _Might I invite a most beautiful lady and her uncle out to dinner_?” He mocked a British-gentleman accent, bowing slightly with one hand by his chest and the other arm horizontally straight as he smiled mischievously. Jade could’ve curled her lip, shock and then disgust welling inside her.

“Only dinner you will be having is _CHI-SPELL_!” Uncle shrieked defiantly, entering a crane-like stance with his chi- lizard held above his head.

“ _Yumoguigwaifaidizao-yumoguigwaifaidizao-yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …!” Uncle and Tohru rapidly chanted together. Lucifer only cocked his head in wry amusement. Both chi-wizards’ weapons, aimed pistol-like, were crackling with bright-green chi, which they fired in twin beams. The blasts hit Lucifer’s chest, a green flash engulfing him. Jade and Jackie both raised a forearm to shield their eyes from the light. After a moment, the flash faded – and Lucifer was standing in the same spot, unscathed. He simply looked down at his grey shirt, lifting an arm to rub out some nonexistent creases. Jade’s jaw fell slightly, dread welling. _Oh, bad day_ …

“Huh. You sure you got your spells right?” Lucifer quipped, like what had just happened were as minor as a broken slingshot. Returning his gaze to them, Lucifer’s unsettling smile threatened to freeze Jade’s insides. “ _My turn_ ,” he whispered in a hushed, secretive voice. Then he slammed his palms into the balcony’s metal floor, and the whole frame buckled like a tsunami were battering it, metal bending, nuts and bolts flying loose. The Chan Clan cried out, a second before a balcony section gave way, sending them and Captain Black falling and screaming. Tohru hit the floor after two seconds, Uncle and Captain Black falling directly after him, while Jackie and Jade hit the floor separately. Black sat up first, rubbing his bald head and groaning.

“ _Ai ya_!” Captain Black looked down at the muffled voice – Uncle’s lower-neck and body were protruding from below and behind his groin, a skinny arm waving frantically. “ _Uncle cannot see, but smells very clearly_!” While Jackie and Jade were getting up, the broken-edged balcony bent snake-like from the wall towards them, metal screeching, Lucifer glowing at its head. Jade saw him first – gritting her teeth, she lashed out with a sweeping kick. Lucifer caught her heel in one hand.

“ _Nice_ …!” he purred, a growl in his voice. “You’ve got some moves…” Then he yanked Jade towards him, making her cry out. She attempted a hand-chop on Lucifer’s left, spun her torso and attempted the same on his other side – he blocked each strike, barely stopping the last one in time. Grabbing either side of Lucifer’s head, Jade attempted vaulting in an arc over and above him. He seized her ankles when they reached his eye-level, and pulled her back down, arms wrapping around her and holding her tight against him.

“Sir!” Quickly getting off Uncle, Captain Black turned to where two armed agents were running forward. Lucifer shone with light again – this close, Jade found the light produced no warmth at all. She heard a high-pitched whine ringing all around her. The agents raised their weapons.

“Hold!” Captain Black yelled. Craning her head, Jade saw Lucifer smile and wink a red eye at the Chan Clan.

“Close your eyes and make a wish,” Lucifer whispered directly in Jade’s ear, voice so close his angular nose’s tip must’ve brushed her lobe. Then the light from Lucifer started expanding rapidly, his head and body quickly disappearing in it, at which point Jade looked away. Looking in front, Jade saw Jackie, Uncle and Tohru raise hands in front of their faces and squint, before the light became so bright that they were blurred shapes. Shapes and colours all around Jade started fading in the intensifying light, and she heard Captain Black’s and several agents’ voices grunt slightly. She also heard the high-pitched whine increasing in her ears, though not to the point of being deafening, as she squirmed and struggled. Within a few seconds, there was nothing in sight but endless white. It was like Jade was closely surrounded by glaring spotlights, though it didn’t burn into her eyes much, as if the light’s rays were somehow staying clear of her head. Then lines and colours started slowly reappearing, the light’s intensity decreasing. The walls and pipes slowly rematerialized, then Jackie, Uncle and Tohru, and Captain Black and the Section 13 agents. They were all still squinting at the withdrawing light’s source, Jackie and Captain Black’s teeth clenched. Craning her head, Jade squinted her eyes as she saw nothing but a pure-white mass of rapidly-coalescing light holding her. As the light continued fading, a humanoid shape slowly reappeared, then Lucifer’s features. He looked at the people in front with wry interest, head cocking slightly. Black’s eyes were still squinted and he blinked them hard, while the gear-clad agents’ body language spoke how momentarily out-of-it they were.

“Interesting…” Lucifer’s voice murmured – Jade felt disgusted, hearing it speak _this_ close to her. “I mean, _usually_ , a little me-light like that makes humans go all fire-eyes. Different laws over the borders, I’m guessing…?” He slowly turned his head, grinning widely at Jade. “Which means you can see me fine!” With his tone, Jade honestly couldn’t tell if his shock was sincere or not.

“Uncle, what do we do?!” Jackie asked urgently, immediately looking at the old man next to him.

“Sir?!” one of the gear-clad agents exclaimed, weapon raised. Lucifer’s body started glowing again - without turning his head, he raised one arm in an upwards-swipe, releasing a sideways-aimed white-energy ripple. It threw the agents backwards again, weapons flying. Then a blast exploded spherically outwards from Jade and Lucifer, kicking up a circular cloud of dust in an outward radius – Jade felt nothing, as if she were in the eye of a storm, but her uncles, Tohru and Captain Black were thrown like a tornado had hit them. Heels digging into the floor, Tohru halted his backwards-trajectory, catching Uncle a second later. Jackie and Captain Black hurtled twenty-five feet, before hitting the floor and sliding further. Jackie performed a kip up, while Black’s back slammed into a large pipe.

“Jade!” Jackie yelled, wide eyes glued on her. Jade fought, but Lucifer’s hold was like iron, arms encasing her too tightly. Lowering Uncle, Tohru put his palms together then slowly brought his arms outward, either one tracing an upwards- or downwards-curving path in parallel, all while chanting.

“ _Yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ , _yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ , _yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ …” Completing the curving path, the arm facing more frontwards became straight, a green beam firing from the squid tentacle it held. Chi-magic blazed over Lucifer and Jade, lightly burning Jade’s skin and half-drowning Lucifer’s light – then it fizzled out, leaving them untouched. White light still glowing lamp-like near her, Jade gasped in horror, while Lucifer’s smiled broadened mischievously.

“It’s impossible,” Tohru exclaimed, gaping while the light cast shadows on his face. “That spell hinders _all_ kinds of bad-magic!” Lucifer hummed, and Jade could practically hear the mock-sour face he was pulling as his glow receded again.

“Sorry, big guy – just well-bred _angel_ -genes here.” Jade first mentally scoffed, then balked a second and backtracked. Around the bunker floor, more agents had gotten up and were running forward, others standing and cocking their weapons. “ _Ah-ah_.” Lucifer wagged a finger, white light shining from him again, irises red as he looked sideways.

“ _Easy_!” Captain Black shouted, raising a hand.

“Wh-What _are you_?!” Jade grunted, craning her head to glare at Lucifer.

“Well, last I checked humans like to call me Satan – or they just mix me up with some black-eyed punk in the Deep Friar…” he murmured, pulling a face like he’d eaten something sour, as he seemed lost in his thoughts. Then he looked Jade right in the eye, and the way he held her gaze made her senses cry, _Danger!_ ”Flattered as I am by all the nicknames…” He turned his head back to in front of himself and Jade, smiling thinly, and Jade found her eyes oddly looking in the same direction. “…I prefer my Christian name. That’s _Lucifer_.”

Jackie’s eyes were wide as Tohru growled, “That can’t be true.”

Uncle shouted, “Bright-light demon’s _pants are on fire_!” When Lucifer moved his head the right way, his index finger near Jade’s throat, she acted – jerking her head fiercely, back of her skull hitting a small protrusion and making Lucifer’s head jerk back. Jackie gasped quietly over the sound of Lucifer’s chuckling – Jade’s captor was laughing a gentle, high and mirthful laugh. Even Lucifer’s laughing face looked slightly unsettling – teeth slightly visible in his grinning mouth, brows and lined forehead looking macabrely sad. He turned his head and hissed air through his undamaged nostrils, like he were clearing something from them.

Looking back at his captive, Lucifer quipped, “I _almost felt that_.” A pause passed as Jade stared in dumb horror at him, her brown eyes meeting his. Then he purred, “What? No second strikes? No?” Lucifer lowered his eyes in seeming disappointment. “Okay…”

Lucifer promptly pulled Jade tight against his chest, closing his eyes as his light suddenly shone like a beacon, his wings’ near-opaque light-forms forming and unfurling around them. He felt Jade crane her head against his body, heard her gasp – a couple seconds later, Lucifer sensed the discomfort radiating from her skin-pores as his true voice manifested, making her cry out in pain. The archangel’s being immediately began seeping into her, scouring her meat and bones’ every cell and molecule – the swaying lines of Lucifer’s light-beams bent and coalesced towards Jade like a closing flytrap’s teeth, translucent tendrils forming to curl and snake weightlessly over her. Lucifer was amazed but not surprised to find compared to her physical makeup, Jade’s _spiritual_ makeup was unlike anything human, angel or anything else in his universe, tasting somewhat of Tohru’s green magic. Jade was even enduring this better than an Earth-One human – no turning to unappetising squish, and she went seven whole seconds before she cried out in pain.

“ _UNCLE_!” Lucifer heard Jackie yell. “Do something!” The skinny man was probably helpless right now. Lucifer skimmed Jade’s spirit-parts, half-a-thousand three-dimensional memories flashing in front of the archangel’s cosmic-level awareness: a mum and dad smiling a bit too widely, a giant Gnome-Kop mascot getting brought to life, Tohru’s birthday, a teenage Jade with a South American tribe.

As his niece remaining trapped and screaming, Jackie was on the verge of yelling again at the resident chi-wizards, when Jade’s outline suddenly glowed green against the white light – then, two thin, dark-coloured streaks lifted out of Jade’s glowing aura. Two of Lucifer’s white tendrils extended towards the ceiling, a crackling blue orb-speck held in either, and halted. The specks suddenly blazed with life, blue lightning-forks practically shooting from their coronas. Jackie gaped. Lucifer’s arms released Jade as he spread them dramatically – Jade promptly ran back over to Jackie and Uncle, Jackie glancing at her to see she was okay before looking back at the light-show. At the blazing energy-twins’ centres, the tiniest speck of bright-red sparkled. Suddenly, the red specks expanded – leaving two jagged-edged, circular panes hanging in the air, a red-and-orange vortex swirling in either one. Lucifer’s light faded back into him, wings disappearing. Behind either swirling pane, a translucent-looking shadow floated forward, red eyes glowing. An earthly-brown, toeless stump of a foot pushed out through one pane’s surface. Huge fingers with protruding square nails curled on the pane’s jagged edges – and a lion-like, grey-and-gold face pressed out, followed by burly, gold-and-brown shoulders and torso. The second pane’s shadow pressed through the surface, revealing a blue-skinned, muscular creature, initially curled into a ball with its arms locked around its legs. As it wholly passed through, it spread its limbs triumphantly, pale-blue and yellow lightning crackling on its suit of armour.

The blood practically drained from the Chan Clan’s faces as they watched Dai Gui and Tchang Zu right their spines, either demon towering more than twice a man’s height.

“Whoa, Nellie,” Captain Black murmured quietly. Demonic-red eyes baring down on the humans, a deep growl emanated from Tchang Zu’s throat, lightning crackling.


	3. Freedom

Jade could swear the demon-sorcerers were glaring at the humans balefully, Tchang Zu’s lightning crackling angrily, two beastly faces menacing. Lucifer’s face was wry and cold, fingertips joined near his beltline while he propped his left arm against a lattice.

“ _Fire_!” Captain Black yelled. Agents’ rifles and rocket-launchers exploded with noise. The moment Tchang Zu and Dai Gui turned their heads, Jade and Tohru grabbed the other two Chans, and ran. Not one second later, the first rocket exploded on Tchang Zu, fire and smoke erupting before more projectiles added to it, burying the demons in a haze of smoke. Jade crouched with Uncle under her, Tohru doing likewise with Jackie as smoking shrapnel blew past. When the blast of air had died, the Chan Clan looked back at the smoke-plumes. Jade dared hope the demons might be disoriented – then Tchang Zu’s bald, spine-decorated head emerged through the smoke, noseless face menacing. Dai Gui became visible just as he tore out a huge chunk of the ground one-handed, promptly throwing it. Several agents were hit like bugs on a windshield, others barely leaping clear. The standing agents resumed gunfire.

“ _Perish, infidels_!” Tchang Zu roared in his resonant, thunder-like growl of a voice. Lightning erupted from the spheres in his raised hands, reducing rockets to blackened cinders mid-air, and forking over agents whose bones became visible.

 _Clang!_ ” _Ugh_!”

The bent pipe smashed Tchang Zu’s cheek hard – prompting him to turn his head to its source, shark-like teeth grit murderously. Jade was at the death-glare’s centre, frozen in her throwing posture – after a brief pause, she grinned from ear-to-ear nervously. The Thunder Demon responded by roaring like a dinosaur, cluster of lightning-bolts building between his hands. Jade leapt clear a second before the lightning-storm would’ve disintegrated her.

“Fall back, fall back!” Captain Black yelled. Almost-immediately, the agents were fleeing under a shield door. Tchang Zu threw another lightning blast at Jade, which barely missed the sprinting woman.

“ _Yumoguigwaifaidizao-yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …!” Uncle was chanting, head and lizard-wielding arm poking above a lattice, before a chi-spell fired. Tchang Zu grunted from the hit, but barely staggered.

“Jade, take cover!” Jackie yelled, head and shoulders above a lattice-girder opposite Uncle’s. She vaulted over and took cover behind the same girder, sandwiching her buttocks into the metal.

Nearby, Tohru half-emerged from behind a console, chi-squid aimed. “ _Yumoguigwaifaidizao, yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …!”

“…y _umoguigwaifaidizao_ - _yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …!” Both chi-wizards were chanting, weapons glowing. Leg raised, Dai Gui slammed his stump-like foot into the earth – it shuddered, and a crack split through the floor from the Earth Demon. It reached Jackie and Jade faster than they could get away, the floor yawning open under and half-swallowing them up to their midsections; Tohru was cut off as the same happened to him, then to Uncle.

“Look what familiar _grubs_ are here!” Dai Gui exclaimed in his spine-gratingly deep voice, lumbering towards the entrenched family as they squirmed and struggled against the earth’s tight jaws.

“Ah… no hard feelings…?” Jackie murmured meekly, looking up into the demon’s shadow as it crept over them. Dai Gui growled.

“You shall suffer a demon’s vengeance!” He raised a gigantic fist above his horns, ready to squash them into a wet mess. Efforts doubling, Jade got her trapped body a little loose – then she immediately leapt out of the earth-fissure, and didn’t waste time before leaping at the air. Dai Gui’s red eyes stared as the leaping woman’s foot found a vertical pipe’s groove, launching herself off that towards a high girder. Leaping from there, she aimed her leg in a flying kick.

“ _AAARGH_ …!” Dai Gui fell backwards with a rolling boulder’s speed. The earth shook when his back hit it, Jade landing in a fluid crouch by the downed demon’s shoulder.

“I’ll get you out, Jackie!” Jackie still had one leg below the knee stuck in the earth when Captain Black came over. Stomping footsteps made Jade turn and see Tchang Zu approaching – she leapt just before he threw a lightning-spear.

Landing on two feet, she heard Jackie yell, “Jade, watch out!” Following instinct, she leapt just before lightning scorched the spot where her feet had been. Tchang Zu formed another lightning-spear and-

“ _Yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao,-yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ …” The dual chanting caught the demon’s attention. Tohru was free from the earth, while across from him Uncle had one arm free. Twin beams fired from their chi-weapons. The Thunder Demon promptly hurled a river of lightning-bolts. Green and blue energy met mid-air momentarily, before the chi broke through. Tchang Zu barely shifted his shoulders before the chi-beam shot past, into the wall near where Lucifer was leaning against his lattice.

“Well, I’ve cooked the meals and done the dishes, so…” Lucifer’s voice seemed to catch both demons’ attention as they looked over at him. “…auf Wiedersehen!” Suddenly, light began pouring from Lucifer again, wings reappearing before the light became so bright Lucifer were like a comet, high-pitched whine filling the air. The whole base trembled like with a small earthquake, the ground under Jade vibrating. After several seconds of this, with lightning-speed the comet-light blasted vertically upwards – leaving a fifteen-foot hole in the bunker’s ceiling, and Jade thought she heard thunder rumbling distantly.

“We must reclaim our territory before our siblings!” Dai Gui grated at Tchang Zu. The Thunder Demon whirled faster than the humans who’d been behind his back could react, firing lightning from one hand diagonally above their heads. Rows of overhead lights burst, making the base rapidly grow shadowed – then the ceiling above the Chan Clan exploded. Jade could’ve gasped in horror, dust and rock falling to crush them – Tohru was upon her and the others, huge arms engulfing Jade half-a-second before rocks smashed around them, and dust and darkness engulfed everything.

As the demon brothers watched, the rock-fall quickly ceased, leaving a small mountain of dirt where Jackie Chan and his human allies had been. Next to Dai Gui, Tchang Zu turned and marched away across the base. He walked under the skylight-hole Lucifer had made, standing in the daylight which contrasted with the red, technology-based light that had just appeared in the underground place. Craning his head skyward and spreading his arms, Tchang Zu fired lightning from his hands up the hole. The daylight slightly darkened, thunder rumbling loudly. Lightning shot back down, crackling on the Thunder Demon’s body, before lifting and carrying Tchang away.

Not wasting any time, Dai Gui began digging with his hands, body rapidly sinking into the earth’s comforting, _dirty_ embrace. He would’ve preferred having subjects to do the digging – he didn’t know what subjects were good for besides ordering – but would do the dirty work himself if he must. When his body up to his horns was below the floor, the Earth Demon drew a blanket of earth back over himself one-handed. Then he began moving, burrowing and sliding with ease through his element – a trail of disturbed and upturned ground no doubt followed him on the manmade chamber’s floor, until he passed beyond a wall, the bottommost past of which burst open with his passage.

Five seconds later, Section 13 agents, almost all clad in riot-like gear and armed with laser cannons, were rushing into the bunker which was bathed red by emergency lighting.

The hill-sized pile of ceiling-rubble stirred with a sound. Slowly, the giant slab topping the rubble was lifted with considerable effort, the Chan family sumo underneath groaning, before he threw the slab away and it crashed. The other family-members and Captain Black began emerging from the rubble-top, coughing and groaning from the disturbed dust. An agent immediately came forward, helping a bruised-scalped Black over the rubble.

“We need every available agent brought in and all surveillance equipment tracking-” _Whack._ ” _Ow_!” Black rubbed the spot where his bald head had been struck, while the agent stared, bemused. The old Chinese man who’d struck the captain said nothing, turning his back on him while the other Chans stepped out from the rubble, Jade supported Jackie Chan.

“Loose demons are _not_ important,” the old man said calmly and seriously. “We must find light-making demon-helper before he releases _more_.” He emphasised the last word breathily.

“How can you know he will do that, Uncle?” Jackie Chan asked.

“This is demon-sorcerer stuff – when has it ever stopped at two?” Jade deadpanned.

“The welcome-back party will have to wait,” Captain Black said straightforwardly, looking at Jade as he stood. The woman nodded her head, face serious enough to match the captain’s.

“Uncle, did you ever see anything like that Lucifer guy before?” she asked. Uncle shook his head.

“We must do research,” the sumo murmured gravely.

* * *

Two hours later, the Chan Clan were in Uncle’s lamp-lit study room – Tohru sat on the floor, which was strewn with open books, Uncle had the study desk and Jade had a chair from the kitchen. They were trying to split their tasks between finding out about ‘Lucifer’, and discovering how the two demon-sorcerers had escaped the Nether-realm. No-one’s hopes were helped by the discovery someone – they could guess who – had broken in and interfered with the study before they’d returned. The study door opened as Jackie pushing it inward with his boot, a stack of books sandwiched between his hands and chin.

“Half of the new shipment!” he groaned, voice strained, and all but staggered across the study.

“Captain Black’s emergency contacts sure work fast at book-shipping,” Jade commented, looking up from her research.

“There’s more on the doorstep,” Jackie murmured, all but dropping his load at Uncle’s desk. Uncle grabbed the pile’s topmost book.

“ _Ai ya_!” he shrieked on seeing the cover. “Why is there an _angel_ book?!” he shouted, holding the book by his nephew’s face.

“Uh- Captain Black must have ordered it,” Jackie said.

“We are not facing an angel, _because angels do not exist_!” Uncle shrieked, tossing the book away. “It is western hocus-pocus!” He picked up the next book. ‘ _Prince of Darkness and Temptation of Christ_ ’?!”

“If Lucifer isn’t an angel, what else could he be?” Jade asked, looking up from her book.

“Do not know,” Uncle replied more calmly. “But Uncle will not find anything useful in books about angels!” But Jade’s mind kept going back over what had happened at Section 13, and the more she thought about it the less nonsensical it seemed, as she crossed her arms with a book in one hand.

“Lucifer usually means the Devil before he got banished down under,” Jade said.

“Demons are liars!” Uncle said, turning in his chair. “Cannot take his word for it that it is even his _real_ name!”

“Tohru, have you found out what else can bring the demons back?” Jackie asked.

“Without their original portals or the power to alter reality, it should be _impossible_ ,” Tohru said, sounding troubled and perplexed.

“Whatever that guy did, he needed me for it to work,” Jade murmured, leaning back in her chair and wracking her brain. Tohru hummed in new thought, then picked a book off the floor. “The good-chi spells didn’t affect him…”

“So he is not Chinese,” Uncle said quickly without lifting his head from the desk.

“And he isn’t using bad-aligned magic, Tohru’s spell proves that.”

Wincing like a grenade had exploded by his ear, Uncle practically shot from his chair, leaning forward like a crane as he snapped, “Then what do you think he is, miss smarty-pants?!”

“He was powerful enough to control the weather, not something a lot of elementals besides demon-sorcerers can do,” Jade started, unfazed by Uncle’s outburst – she paced the study, hand by her chin, while her uncles watched her. “He looks human but his eyes turned red, and he has that light and wing effect. But he doesn’t use bad-magic.” She faced her uncles. “My guess? Angels really are real, and he really is Lucifer.”

“If angels existed, chi-wizards would know!” Uncle said, index finger raised.

“ _Tch_ , we’ve met a whole truckload of things you said weren’t real!” Jade retorted, folding her arms. “Oni, Mainyu, Yaksha. Maybe angels and Lucifer are next?”

“If Lucifer uses good-magic, it would explain Tohru’s spell not working,” Jackie murmured, hand by his chin.

“ _Ai ya_! No good-magic can be knowingly used for such evil!” Uncle shouted at Jackie. That made Jade furrow her eyebrows, biting her lip slightly as she turned away and thought hard, while Uncle continued shouting at Jackie. “It is against all laws of the _universe_!” Jade’s eyes widened, like something fluid had passed between the turning cogs in her head.

“All the laws of _this_ universe,” she murmured. She turned back to see she’d gotten her uncles’ attention. “But what if Lucifer is from another universe?” Uncle and Jackie gawked.

“Explain,” Tohru murmured, looking interested where he sat by the wall.

Jade responded with a smirk; “You once told me that different dimensions aren’t really separate universes, but more like mini-universes, like a cake. Different layers – _millions of them_ – connected and stacked together to form one big thing?”

“That’s right.”

“Suppose our cake isn’t the only one, and outside the universe there’s another one, another cake that Lucifer comes from?” Turning to her uncles, Jade pounded a fist in her palm as she finished with a smile, “Where the laws of magic are different!”

“Enabling Lucifer to defy our universe’s laws of magic and breach the barrier separating the realms!” Tohru supplied, bespectacled eyes widening.

“…My head hurts,” Jackie murmured, rubbing his head as he looked lost.

Mind coming to the next part of the forming puzzle, Jade frowned. “But what is Lucifer doing in our universe, and why is he in league with the demons?” A pause passed, and Uncle looked thoughtful as he put a hand to his chin.

“It would take _veeery great_ power to breach the fabric of the universe,” he murmured, taking a step forward. “If such power were used in the Demon Nether-realm…”

“You really think the demon-sorcerers could pull off something like that?” Jade asked, eyes wide.

“They are powerful, wielding ancient magic knowledge which to all others is forgotten.” As he spoke with a raised finger, Uncle stepped further into the study space’s centre, holding everyone’s attention. “And they are selfish, following the ways of want and ambition which belong to dark magic. If they risked tearing the very fabric of reality to be freed…”

“They did it once with the Book of Ages,” Jade murmured, glaring thoughtfully at the floor. “And if Lucifer is who he says he is in his universe, he could just be helping them for evil’s sake.”

“ _Gah_ \- But why did Lucifer need Jade to release the two demons?” asked Jackie, who’d been looking bemused and probably only half-listening up to now.

“I think I know.” Three heads turned to Tohru, who looked up from the multiple books open in his lap – lined face grave. “I’ve re-reviewed the history of the Immortals who originally banished the demons, comparing different accounts. It suggests that whenever a demon-sorcerer is banished, traces of the demon’s chi will cling to the one who banishes them.”

“You mean like the demon-chi on the artefacts that demon-junior absorbed?” Jade asked, wide-eyed in surprise.

“Yes, but much less potent than that – I suspect, not enough to have been activated nine years ago,” Tohru murmured, holding Jade’s gaze. “You wielded the Immortal castanets that defeated Tchang Zu, and the flower that re-banished the Earth Demon.”

“Lucifer must be using the trace demon-chi as tethers to pull the demons out of the Nether-realm,” Jade murmured, the dots rapidly connecting. “Who else used the Immortal symbols when we banished the demons?” Jade looked at her uncles.

“Just Jackie,” Tohru murmured, turning his gaze.

“But why didn’t Lucifer take the demon-chi from me in Section 13?” Jackie asked, glancing to Uncle for an answer.

“Because he intends to free the one demon who was never banished by an Immortal,” Uncle said, face and voice slightly dark.

Jade’s eyebrows lowered slightly. “ _Drago_.

“But you and Big T cast the spell that sent him and his dragon-daddy packing!” She spoke behind Uncle’s shoulder as he was removing a book from a shelf.

Uncle turned and said, “There is no demon-chi to extract from Uncle and Tohru, because the spell cast was a _reversal_ spell. Turning demon gateway into _demon vacuum_.” As he flipped the book’s pages, Jade saw from the visible cover it was a geography book. Uncle’s voice was an ominous whisper as he said, “There is only _one_ place where Drago can be freed.” He showed them the page he’d stopped on, a black-and-white photo dominating the page’s top.

“The stadium?” Jackie recognised the baseball stadium where they’d fought a demon horde many years ago.

“The fabric of the mortal world is weaker there, thanks to Drago,” Tohru murmured, stepping up beside Jade – his eyebrows lowered darkly as he said, “Enough to reverse the reverse.”

“I will call Captain Black,” Jackie said very-seriously, back to the main shop – when the shadow fell over most of his back, he was the last to notice, while Jade gawked and slightly backed up.

“Don’t bother.” Jackie turned at the harsh, nasally voice. Three men stood shadowed by the shop’s daylight, in the study’s door, the central figure flanked by the others, all wearing suits with ties. Jade recognised the flunkies as Section 13 agents, but the light-skinned Latino guy in the centre was a stranger. He stood an inch shorter than the agents with sloping shoulders, suit copper-coloured. A moustache concealed his entire upper-lip, and the top of his forehead was bald whilst his black hair stuck out in grey-streaked tufts at the back. Milky-brown, almost monochrome eyes were fixed on Jackie. “Misters and Miss Chan, you’re coming with me.”

“Who are you?” Jackie asked – next to him, Jade frowned and crossed her arms, unimpressed with the guy’s attitude.

“Major Mike Gómez, head of Section 12,” the copper-suit agent said, mean face unchanging as he took two daring steps into the study, hands in his pockets. “The government brass sent me when they got word Captain Black is spouting his demons-and-magic nonsense again.”

“Major, it is not nonsense,” Jackie tried to plead. “A dange-”

“Save it,” Major Gómez spat coldly – the way he cut Jackie off lowered Jade’s new-forming opinion of him further. “Whatever hallucination-inducing crud and fake-demon footage you’ve been pulling, it ends here. Cuff ‘em!” He barked the command at the agents; either one slowly moved forward with a pair of handcuffs.

“ _Gah_ \- Mickey, please!” Jackie cried, palms raised desperately as said agent approached him. Teeth grit in outrage, Jade turned her head, eyes fixing on the first thing besides a book they saw on the shelves. With a shadowless kick she lifted a stray book, then kicked it mid-air into the oncoming agent to push him back. She swiped the wood-carved Asian statuette and aimed it, a bolt of yellow magic shooting out. Before the agents could get close, Mickey was blasted and disappeared in a bright flash. _Almost_ disappeared – a platypus now stood on the floor near Major Gómez’s feet.

“There’s your hallucination!” Jade said sarcastically, smirking as she watched the major pick up platypus-Mickey by the scruff of his back, the major’s mouth slightly open. She re-fired the statuette’s magic-beam, and in a flash, the weight of Mickey’s human body almost jerked Gómez’s arm back to earth with him. Mickey, rubbing his head and suit as he stood up as if to check he was all there, cast Jade a slight glare. Turning from Mickey, the surprise was on the major’s face a few seconds, before it became hard on the Chans again.

“… _Very well_ ,” he murmured more quietly, though Jade wasn’t sure she liked the gentle tone. “Then you four are going to tell me _everything_ you know about what’s going on, en route to Section 13.”

“ _No_!” Uncle loudly protested at the family’s rear, throwing up his skinny arms. “Uncle and fellow chi-wizard Tohru must devise counter-spells!”

Jade definitely didn’t like Major Gómez’ tight tone as he forced out, “Section 13 will handle that.” He turned his milky-brown glare on all of them – Jade was vaguely aware even Jackie was now glaring at the jerk with open hostility. “ _You_ will do your duty as citizens and tell the appropriate forces what has-!”

“Sir, it’s Captain Black.” Jade hadn’t realised the other agent had been on his cellphone, which he now held out towards Major Gómez while speaking quickly. “He wants to speak to you – _now_.” The major almost snatched the cellphone, and put it to his ear.

“Gómez here.” A pause passed, in which Jade exchanged a bemused look with Jackie, then another with Tohru behind her shoulder. “I don’t care who’s head of Section 13, Black. I’m here to get it straight what’s going on in San Fran, and I’ll be darned if-!” Whatever Captain Black said cut him off. The Chan Clan watched the major carefully, Jade glaring slightly at him – she could faintly hear the squeaking echoes of whatever Black was saying over the phone. The major finally lowered the cellphone but didn’t hang up, turning his hard eyes back on the Chan Clan. “Black has informed me you four are all vital assets in a magical crisis and are to be left to your devices.” His tone darkened as he said: “ _Until I decide other measures need to be taken_.”

Jackie just gave the major a stern glare of his own.

* * *

The early evening light cast the cylindrical structure in shadow, floodlight-panels atop the stadium’s outer-wall almost black with it. The parking lot was practically deserted save the odd parked vehicle, including four black vans within a hundred square feet of each-other around the lot. Jade sat in one such van’s driver seat with binoculars to her eyes, scanning the stadium exterior and skies outside the windshield.

“Anything?” Jackie asked, leaning over the front seats from the van’s back. Jade lowered the binoculars and shook her head at him.

“By the way, Black,” she addressed the captain, one of a few personnel in the van’s rear sitting at the two banks of monitors, each wearing a headset; “how did you get Major Gómez to back off?”

“He and I go back,” Black replied. “And I didn’t get him to back off, I just convinced him not to do anything mad and drastic without giving us a chance.” His tone supported Jade’s hunch that the two men weren’t on friendly terms.

“What happens if we fail?” Jade heard Jackie ask while she resumed her binocular-work.

“Something mad and drastic,” Black replied grimly. “Agents all over the city are on red alert for any weather anomalies. If Dark-Clarence shows up again, we’ll know in less than a minute.” Jackie nodded.

“And if Lucifer attempts to reopen the portal here, we must buy all the time we can until Uncle and Tohru have a way to defeat him,” Jackie said, eyebrows low as he looked ahead with Jade.

“So… we’re really fighting an angel?” Captain Black murmured, clearly bemused.

“Looks like it,” Jade said flippantly, lowering her binoculars.

“Demons and dark-chi wizards were more than enough for me…” Jackie sighed by Jade’s shoulder. Not a moment later, Black’s gloveless left hand was on his headset’s muff as he received something.

“A storm just appeared out of nowhere, headed straight for us,” he said quickly. As the sky dimmed, Jade lowered her binoculars.

“Actually… it’s _already here_ ,” Jade murmured gravely. Speak of the devil – _literally_. Grey clouds were rushing together in the sky with such speed they looked like raging seas spilling into each-other.

“Men, we above a bogey above the diamond! I repeat, bogey above the diamond!” Captain Black shouted into his headset. Building winds blew rotted leaves from autumn and the odd papers at bullet-speed, and a couple distant car-alarms went off while the van rocked on its springs. Thunder cracked, a ball of pure-white snaking into the merging clouds with fish-like fluidity – from the clouds’ centre, it shot an equally-white vertical lightning-bolt downward. The lightning-bolt blasted the parking lot’s gravel twenty feet away from the windshield, present for one second – when the lightning vanished, a grey-shirted figure with light hair stood there who hadn’t been there before, back to the van. Jade and Jackie watched intently as Lucifer began walking away. The figure passed from sight under the overhang of the stadium’s main entrance.

“That’s our que!” Jackie said while Jade was already opening the driver’s door. The winds outside had died as rapidly as they’d come, Jade found as she exited and ran forward, her uncle exiting the van’s sliding door and joining her as they closed the distance to the stadium.

* * *

Jade and Jackie were in the stadium’s concrete tunnel twenty seconds later, crouching short of the last bend before they’d be upon the baseball field. Carefully, they leaned forward to spy ahead. Beyond the tunnel’s mouth, they saw Lucifer walking ahead on the open field. His boots stopped short of the diamond’s white lines, and he was visibly turning his light-haired head. After a few seconds, Lucifer abruptly rolled his shoulders, white glow and wings of light reappearing.

“ _It’s now or never_ ,” Jade hissed to Jackie, whose head was a foot from her own. Then she sprinted forward, an orb in hand.

“Hey, feather-back!” Lucifer spun, revealing his irises were glowing red. Teeth grit, Jade threw the steel-coloured orb. It hit the ground at Lucifer’s feet, a second before yellow lightning-arcs burst out – with a flash of light, a yellow-lined maw tore open the air behind Lucifer like a monster opening its jaws, cloudless sky and sand-dunes visible inside the magic tear. If Lucifer looking over his shoulder had any reaction, Jade didn’t see it, before the glowing angel was sharply pulled off his feet and in. The maw snapped shut behind him, vanishing.

“Go, Chi-Wizard Tohru,” Jade murmured, smirking devilishly as she dusted off her hands, while Jackie stopped running behind her.

“I’d give it a solid B.” Jade’s smile fell, and she could practically hear Jackie squeak in horror – she turned her head to the voice’s source, to see Lucifer leaning casually against the concrete wall below the stadium’s seating, smirking thinly. “Would’ve given it more if it actually worked.

“But I gotta give a girl points for trying.” Jade spun as Lucifer’s voice suddenly spoke behind her head, to see him now standing less than a metre from her – she would’ve back-pedalled, but he glowed slightly, then shimmered and vanished like an illusion in the mist. She spun, to see the other Lucifer was still by the wall, except he was now striding towards her. Even when Jade slipped into a combative stance with Jackie, the advancing angel looked unthreatened.

“Come on, guys…” Lucifer sighed, sounding to Jade somewhat like an exasperated old man trying to reason. “What’s the plan here? Are you gonna _Fist of Fury_ me until I neutralise you both? _Again_.” He smirked at the last word. Jade simply removed another chi-spell sphere from her jacket and threw it. When it hit the ground, smoke exploded in an instant, a cloud of dark-grey enveloping everything. Senses choked, Jade ran in the opposite direction to Jackie, no more than a faint silhouette. “ _Guys_!” she heard Lucifer’s voice holler.

“Lucifer! Ah… You knit the world’s worst underwear!” Jackie’s voice cried through the smoke as he no doubt halted somewhere – Jade could’ve smiled at his poor taunt.

Halting, she yelled her own taunt into the smoke, “ _Hey_ -!”

A ball of blinding light suddenly tore through the smokescreen in front of her, engulfing her. White engulfed Jade’s vision, followed by searing red – suddenly she was airborne, hurtling ten feet above the ground from Lucifer’s light. She and Jackie – _he’d been thrown too?!_ – halted in the air sharply, a translucent light-tendril’s tip touching either of their bodies, and Jade’s body started waking to the freight-like force that had blasted her away. Then they were intangibly yanked back the way they’d come from like they were on intangible bungies – screaming as their insides burned like Jade’s had when Lucifer had had her, they shot straight past the glowing angel on either side, and he spun on his heel in their passing. They must’ve slowed as they approached their destination, as Jade only grunted when her back and Jackie’s hit the concrete wall. Almost as soon as Jade opened her eyes, Lucifer’s trademark high-pitched whine and light intensified, casting shadows on her face – several more light-tendrils were undulating in the air near them with that polar lights-like slowness. Jade heard another sound and felt the surface she was on shifting, as her body _sank_ into a perfect mould that the concrete was forming behind her, concrete bands enclosing her wrists. As Lucifer’s light began retracting into him, Jade and Jackie both grunted and struggled, pinned in place.

“Guys, come on!” Lucifer chuckled, glow fading, bright eyes becoming humanlike blue again.

* * *

Watching the stadium from beside the van, Captain Black was getting concerned with every ten seconds that passed, a scowl on his square-jawed face as he glared up the outer-wall. There was no red sky or demon swarms yet, but something about this silence and suspense tickled him the wrong way. And remembering what Lucifer (it still seemed weird every time he thought that name) did to the base and his men, he didn’t like the idea of them being in there with him this long and nothing happening. Finally, the bearded captain went to the open van.

“Where is everyone else?!” he barked tautly.

“Delayed by traffic, sir,” one of the agents said, hand on his headset’s muff. “They should be here in ninety seconds.”

* * *

“Er, if you’re trying to free demons, you’re wasting your time!” Jackie stuttered hurriedly. “This is the wrong stadium! No demons were ever banished here!” Jade looked at Lucifer, Jackie’s tone making her doubt the lie would work.

“Oh, no?” Lucifer murmured, raising his eyebrows. He pouted his lower-lip and looked upward in mock-scrutiny. “‘Cos… it really _feels_ like I found the drain at Helm’s Deep…”

“Er…” Jackie’s brown eyes shifted. “Perhaps… there’s a _better drain_ …?” He grinned sheepishly. A mirthful laugh from Lucifer greeted the Chans.

“Why didn’t you just grab Jackie back in Section 13?” Jade demanded, glaring at the evil angel.

“The Blues Brothers looked like they wanted some of him first, who was I to interrupt?” he murmured sarcastically with a shoulder-shrug, then snorted a slight snigger. “Besides-” His body language was suddenly open, arms spread as he advanced towards the wall, and Jade didn’t like it at all. “-can’t a guy wanna watch a girl _come to him_?” He spoke in a mock-sultry, accented voice straight out of a black-and-white movie.

“Never. Happening.” Jade spat each word in a deadpan voice, lip curled.

“Well… settle in there, beautiful,” Lucifer murmured, smirking cheekily, and Jade immediately wished she could wipe that smirk off his face. “Now…” He clapped his hands together as he turned on Jackie, smiling broadly. “…ready to _break a leg_ , Jackie?” Jackie grunted, uselessly fighting his concrete mould and bindings. Lucifer was less than a metre from Jackie in no time. “ _Enter the Dragon_!” he whispered, before he promptly placed either hand on Jackie’s head and began to glow. Jade’s uncle screamed in pain as Lucifer’s high-pitched whine returned, white light spilling from Lucifer and his hands.

“ _Jackie_!” Jade yelled, before the whiteness got so bright she had to squint and then turn her head slightly, though she didn’t wholly look away. She saw the lick of bright-red from Lucifer’s eye among his white light, and she saw the bright-green flare of her uncle’s chi-corona further mar the light. A moment later, as Lucifer’s light receded somewhat, translucent tendrils lifted half-a-dozen dark-chi orbs above all of their heads, holding them there until they unanimously flared lightning-arcs. Lucifer stepped backwards from the bound Chans, at which point Jackie half-sagged as though relieved from torture – but Jade didn’t have time to look at him in concern, as she gasped in horror at the sight overhead. Six giant Nether-vortices finished expanding and were swirling, eight feet above the ground. While Jade was staring, Lucifer suddenly slammed his hands into the grass, a vibration rattling the air, earth and concrete. Jade shifted her wide-eyed gaze, and instantly saw the bright-yellow, magic flare in the stadium field’s centre. It crackled unchangingly, and Jade could’ve jumped when the air and reality suddenly _split apart_ above it – literally, a jagged crack of flame-yellow light began splitting and climbing upwards from the flare. The crack ran ever-upwards until it had entered the grey clouds overhead – then a blinding flash engulfed the world for one second, and when it was over, bloodred started flooding through the clouds outward from the crack. In seconds, Jade was staring up at a hell-red sky – before a harsh sound like splitting earth drew her and Jackie’s wide-eyed gazes.

The yellow flare that had spawned the crack had expanded, a horizontal line of yellow light blazing across half the field. Suddenly, a huge, dark-green mass shot outward, skyward-arched clawed fingers revealing it to be a huge arm, before it lunged and raked its claws into the earth. A new tremor shook the stadium at the hand’s mere touch. Giant, curling horns rose out of the yellow light next, followed by glowing red eyes, a shark-like grinning mouth, black-clad shoulders, folded green wings. Jade and Jackie’s jaws were slack as Drago’s dark shadow covered them, and his booming laughter filled the air like a distant volcanic eruption. Head tossed back as he cackled, the chi-mutated demon looked like Jade remembered, down to his tattered clothes, save for his double-jointed legs seeming further bent and his shoulder broader. The concrete vibrated under Drago’s laughter, and Jade saw cracks start spreading along the concrete towards her, though not quite reaching her. It prompted her to double her now-frantic efforts to twist her wrists inside her concrete cuffs, until Jackie’s horrified gasp made her follow his gaze.

Tso Lan floated first through one of the vortex-panes, the regal-robed, insectoid-man’s back straight. Something grey and green started pushing through another vortex-pane – as lidded red eyes and a crooked mouth appeared, it was revealed to be a head with a bun hairstyle, the vortex’s edges expanding to make way for Po Kong’s huge girth. Clawed feet which looked too small to support her touched the ground. Xiao Fung’s grinning, slanted-eyed head emerged from another vortex, clawed fingers gripping its edges. Bai Tza slid through another vortex, hissing in all her blue-and-white glory. Hsi Wu shot out of the immediately-adjacent vortex, the imp-like Sky Demon chuckling as he flew upward with bullet-like speed. A green, clawed hand gripped the last vortex’s edge, before a snarling, elongated face with gleaming teeth and a crown of spikes emerged, promptly followed by huge shoulders. Jade momentarily stopped and stared with Jackie, while Lucifer smiled impassively – clawed, double-jointed legs slammed into the earth disturbingly close. Straightening his spine, Shendu’s beastly, fin-whiskered face bore a triumphant look, lower jaw forming a smirk as his glowing eyes locked on his audience.

“ _Greetings, everyone_!”


	4. Play Ball, Round 2

Captain Black moved quickly along the concrete tunnel with two agents directly behind him, each carrying a bazooka. He slowed, creeping along the wall as he approached the bend at which daylight entered the tunnel. After a pause he sprinted to the wall beyond the bend. Still in the shadow of the field entrance’s overhang, Black crouched low as he crept further out, already clearly hearing what sounded like a typhoon. When he saw the noise’s source, his green eyes widened.

“Whoa, Nellie…” The sky had turned bloodred, and a jagged yellow beam or crack was climbing from the ground like Jack’s beanstalk. Turning his head, he saw demons, huge and numbering more than half-a-dozen, lurking very close to the overhang. Noting they seemed to have their attention on the field’s concrete walls, Black shifted an inch further out – putting him dangerously close to the shadow’s edge, a finned tail undulating several metres in front of him. Between the demons’ bodies, he saw Jackie and Jade pinned to the concrete like prisoners on a torture rack.

A static voice came through Black’s earpiece, prompting him to recoil, and he signalled to his men to back up as he put his finger to the earpiece – the voice sounded urgent and slightly nervous. “ _Sir, we are at the diamond_. _Requesting orders_.”

“Bring in air artillery, and ground troops stand by for my order. The demons are in the diamond! And tell Mister Chan, we need magic and we need it now!”

* * *

Tohru sat at the shop’s kitchen table, reading an angelology book out of several opened books on the table – there wasn’t much in it he was finding useful, just the stuff he’d given up on some time ago, though he’d done some outside-box thinking and found several valid possible-

_Knock-knock._

The sumo raised his head.

“Shop is closed!” Uncle shouted, leaning out of the study door, just before Tohru emerged from the nearby kitchen, miniscule-looking book tucked under his shoulder.

“Uh, Mister Uncle Chan,” said the agent at the door-less front doorway, removing his fist from the wall – several more agents were outside behind him, and Tohru thought the daylight outside seemed reddish. “Captain Black says you’re both needed. He says the demons have arrived, and magic is needed right now.”

“ _Ai ya_!” Uncle gasped, grasping his tussled-haired head. “Uncle has nothing to defeat evil-angel! Tohru…?!”

Tohru hesitated oonly a moment before saying, “I discovered _this_ reference while I was looking through old spellbooks.” He held out a spellbook, opening it to the right page. Uncle took it – one second after looking at the pages, the skinny chi-wizard audibly gasped, normally-beady eyes bulging.

“Tohru…” Uncle all but whispered airily. “Is _very dangerous_ …” Uncle’s hand drifted ghostlike to his hair and grasped it, both chi-wizards ignoring the agents’ confused faces. “I… must think on this.” Despite the horror lingering in his eyes, there was a hint of contemplation in Uncle’s voice.

“Uncle,” Tohru said, stepping forward; “everything I know, I learned from you.” He leaned forward to meet Uncle’s gaze. “Though I may be a full chi-wizard, you are still wiser with age than I am. It is my firm belief that if anyone can defeat Lucifer with what we have, i-” The elder abruptly turned heel. “Uncle?”

“No need to keep talking,” Uncle said offhandedly, back to Tohru as he strode towards the study. “Uncle has made up mind. Will need paint!” Tohru’s baffled look vanished as he turned serious, standing straight and facing the agent.

“We require a supply run to the homeware store. Can you be back here in seven minutes?”

* * *

Shendu grinned sadistically, dark and delicious thoughts begging to be enacted as the concrete-bound humans squirmed, like flies in a spider’s web. Rearing his head, the draconic demon scented the air through his snout’s nostrils, closing his glowing eyes. He hummed, then growled. Po Kong, towering over all of them, hummed appreciatively as if she’d noticed her brother’s delight.

“A slow-roasted starter…?” the bulbous Mountain Demon murmured, leaning her big-lipped face a bit closer.

“I guess I should say goodbye, huh?” Lucifer’s nasally, humanlike voice murmured, the trans-universal angel standing on his own in front of the demons with a hand stroking his chin.

“Today on the cooking channel…” It wasn’t Drago’s amplified voice so much as the power in his approaching footsteps that made Shendu crane his head slightly towards his hybridised son. “…how to make great starters with Jade’s-in-blankets…” Drago raised a clawed hand, summoning a fireball. “… _and mini Chan-burgers_!”

Sick grin plastered on his face, Drago was one second from drawing out the humans’ first death screams-

“Huh?!” He stayed his arm halfway, chin-tentacles writhing as he craned his head – helicopters were approaching in the distance under the bloodred sky. No, fleets of choppers were closing in on the stadium from all four directions. Drago’s father, aunts and uncles also looked around wryly, while the chimera demon ignored the niggling thing in the corner of his eye – if he’d heeded it, he would’ve seen Jade twisting and sliding her wrist in its concrete cuff. Drago just turned his horned head to look around a little, until his face was at an angle that his glowing red gaze was drawn back to the concrete wall. While Lucifer was chopper-gazing, Jade was sliding her last arm free!

Elongated face twisting in fury, Drago raised a hand and let loose torrents of Thunder Demon lightning. Jade leapt sideways milliseconds before the blast would’ve obliterated her, instead hitting the concrete where she’d been bound and expanding her body-shaped hole. In the same second Xiao Fung began turning his body at the commotion, Jade touched one foot on his green-shelled back and vaulted herself in the air.

“Huh?” Shendu started spinning, red eyes wide – a split-second before Jade’s sole connected with his face in an airborne front kick. “ _ARGH_!” The strike sent Drago’s father flying backwards, spittle flying from his fanged jaws. His back collided with grass and dirt, large weight causing a small tremor on impact whilst Chan landed in a crouch. Jade’s eyes bulged, and she barely moved in time to avoid being cut to ribbons by Bai Tza, whose eel-like body swished left and right furiously as the Water Demon tried to shred the agile woman. Rage blazed like a forest fire in Drago’s core, seeking to consume everything in its path as he grit his sharp teeth. He intended nothing but a bloody death as he threw out an arm, palm glowing dark-blue with demon-chi. Jade must’ve seen him in a split-second while dodging Bai Tza – she leapt back a millisecond before the beam of earth shot upwards at bullet-speed, earth violently hitting Drago’s aunt instead of his intended target. Then the helicopters fired missiles. They exploded on the demons with the numerousness and relentlessness of raindrops – the first several explosions against Drago’s chest were like water-balloons, but in a few seconds he was overwhelmed by smoke and fire.

* * *

Captain Black and his men ran forward on the field, the toad-like demon sucking in air ahead of them. Falling into a crouch, Black aimed and fired his bazooka. The projectile exploded on the demon’s swollen throat, throwing him backwards in the air. Black promptly ran to his concrete-encased friend, ignoring the explosions and blasts of demons being bombarded.

“Jackie, are you alright?!” the bearded man yelled in the archaeologist’s face – the man next to the hole where Jade had been trapped looked oddly dazed, hair standing like he’d absorbed a lot of static.

“ _Bad day_ …” Jackie mumbled, uncomprehending, before his eyes bulged. “ _WHAT-DID-YOU-SAY_?” he screamed worse than Black’s deaf aunt, making the agent wince. Captain Black let a one-second pause filled with explosion-noise pass in case of further outbursts, then acted.

“Hold still!” Black instructed, taking two steps back and cocking his bazooka.

“ _Whaaat_?”

_PWA-BAM._

Eight square feet of smoke erupted as Jackie was thrown screaming. He landed on his hands and knees in the grass, concrete shards raining. Captain Black sprinted – and got two sprint-steps before a white blast collided with his side, throwing him. Like a thrown toy, the screaming agent went over fifteen feet in the air, above the first few rows of stadium seats. Then he came down amongst folding seats, body badly splayed over the back-rests. Black’s mind was a fog, and vision a sea of white and other swimming colours.

“… _emember me_?” He barely comprehended the voice’s words. Black rubbed his bald head, groaning. As the white dimmed, he realised four bright-glowing Lucifer’s with wings were forming in his vision. “ _Hello_?” The Lucifer’s’ voices were getting more discernible, enough for Black to register the false concern. “ _McClane, you with us_?” One groan and a long eye-blink later, Captain Black was clear. At that very moment, the red-eyed figure creased his mouth in a thin smile.

_VESHH!_

The missile shot towards Lucifer from nowhere. Black’s eyes widened a moment later. The missile was hanging suspended less than a metre from the glowing angel, fiery propulsion still burning out of its rear end – then it exploded, fire and smoke arcing around but staying clear of Lucifer like the explosion had hit a dome. Lucifer’s face suddenly looked not-so-mocking as he slowly turned his head, red eyes unblinking. Some distance across the field, the bazooka-wielding agent who’d fired looked back with wide eyes. Lucifer’s white light abruptly intensified. As the bending ray-lines reappeared, a translucent tendril shot out from Lucifer. It hit the agent, and with a violent sound, his leg instantly exploded like a bloody water balloon as he fell backwards. Black’s jaw momentarily fell.

“Man down, _man down_!” He picked himself up as he yelled, sprinting away.

* * *

Behind Lucifer, Tso Lan rose vertically in the air to escape the exploding projectiles, red and purple robes billowing, four arms spread. He curled his clawed fingers inward. And instantly, the humans’ helicopters were suddenly being dragged forward by their own gravity, many spinning or twisting in some way as they tried to escape the pull. The pilots began abandoning ship by parachute, as their vehicles crawled together above Tso Lan’s head. The nearest helicopters’ rotor-blades shredded each-other as they converged, before the machines exploded. Other helicopters added with increasingly speed to the mass of crushed and burning metal, triggering more slightly-suppressed explosions. A couple fired their missiles. Tso Lan responded by shifting one of his smaller hands, catching the projectiles’ gravity and making their paths curve into the ball of metal and fire. As mortals on parachutes continued raining, two grunted in surprise when a green claw abruptly snatched them – Po Kong moaned hungrily with her jaws open, tongue lolling. Beyond an indulgent bout of sadistic satisfaction, the Moon Demon cared little for the screams of his sister’s victims. Nearby, Drago threw a fireball to obliterate one helicopter, while Bai Tza’s pressurised water-sprays made another two go up in flames. After a few more seconds, the last helicopters fell into Tso Lan’s gravity centre and exploded – the Moon Demon, not endeared by the crudeness of his construct, released its gravity, letting the ball of half-melted metal crash to earth.

Lucifer, sitting in the second-up row of stadium seats, watched the demon-sorcerers’ anarchy with interest, legs crossed above the backrest of the seat in front of him – he plucked and swallowed a piece from the popcorn bag he’d conjured from his being, plucking it in his mouth. Being a piece of him, the food was completely tasteless, and he quickly decided he didn’t see why humans found pleasure in this habit. Noise on Lucifer’s diagonal right caught the fallen archangel’s attention. Gear-clad humans were suddenly surging in from the field entrance with bazooka-like weapons, falling into crouches and firing rockets and energy-beams. With a powerful-looking swipe of his larger arm, Tso Lan caused the rockets to explode short of him, whilst the laser-beams bent away to skim him. The beams cut a defined chunk out of an overhead floodlight’s silhouette, and cut through a couple non-eaten chopper pilots’ parachutes. Drago flew forward on his bat-like green wings, throwing a lightning spear. It prompted the agents to disperse just before they could be vapourised.

“Fall back! Fall back!” the bald captain yelled, half-a-second before Lucifer spotted him running back towards the entrance tunnel. Much closer to Lucifer’s seating, Po Kong lumbered forth, chasing Jade on the ground, bulbous body lowered like a tyrannosaur and undersized arms outstretched – Jade ran in zigzag patterns, forcing the demon-sorcerer to keep adjusting her running line, though Po Kong seemed relentless.

The sound of a bazooka firing made Lucifer want to roll his eyes at the interruption. His popcorn-bag became white light and melted back into him, as he saw the incoming rocket – with a sharp arm-wave, he send an energy-wave which obliterated the rocket. The energy-wave also hit the agent who’d fired the rocket, causing his arm to fall from his shoulder beside him.

Returning his eyes to the fighting, and unable to help smiling slightly, Lucifer saw Jade sprinting towards his general position. She skidded to a stop some metres from the concrete barrier – above her head, Po Kong’s glowing eyes were wide and mouth open, as she lunged a clawed hand forward. Jade moved half-a-second short of being grabbed, suddenly running into the demon-sorcerer’s wide shadow. Then she performed a flying kick on Po Kong’s rock-padded knee. Po cried out as her head and shoulders fell forward – her oblong chin crashed through the concrete and lower-down seating in front of Lucifer, producing a violent tremor and kicking up a dust.

Sprinting away from the fallen Mountain Demon, Jade resisted the call of the adrenaline pumping through her, keeping a balance between energy and fatigue. With several demon-sorcerers plus a chi-spell-proof evil angel in one place, she refused to exhaust her energy too quickly – especially when the fight around her was completely going to hell, as demons’ wind and water and lightning blasted agents away. Jade veered to avoid running into Shendu, who had his muscular back to her as he breathed fire at some agents. Then she stopped at the sight ahead.

“Captain Black!” she yelled his name, seeing him running with other agents to the stadium exit. Not a second after she’d spoken, seemingly from nowhere, Hsi Wu plucked Black off the ground, the winged demon shooting with bullet-speed in her direction. Jade’s mouth was open for one second before she grit her teeth and sprinted head-on. She leapt off the ground mid-run, grabbing onto the blur of black and charcoal-grey that shot in the opposite direction. Hsi Wu instantly grunted and began rising and falling with the new weight, large wings flapping furiously. Jade’s mind registered rhythmic booms, about half-a-second before she was yanked from the air, and from Black and the Sky Demon. The claw that had grabbed Jade held her close (by the large demon’s standards) to Po Kong’s hungry eyes, the demoness humming as she licked her crooked lips.

* * *

Groaning, Jackie shook his head, clearing some of the throbbing. He sat up on the grass – and up and up, it taking him a moment to realise his body was levitating, at which point he yelled. Without a shift in balance, Jackie’s body rotated to a belly-down position – he barely comprehended the levitation ceasing and gravity seizing at his core, before a clawed hand snatched him from the air. Bringing him face-to-face with Shendu, red eyes blazing two feet from Jackie’s.

“Hello, _my old friend_ …” Shendu’s sibilant voice was silky-sounding in the sickest manner. A second later, the vice-like grip tightened on Jackie’s torso to the point he grunted in intense pain, scrunching his eyes as his ribs creaked in protest.

_PCHOW!_

“ _Urgh_!” The blast to Shendu’s pectorals threw him sideways. The force was such that Shendu continued sliding after his body had hit the earth, shredding it under his giant form, knuckles of the hand holding Jackie taking the earth’s friction. Wriggling furiously, Jackie slid free of the hold and leapt, landing in a crouch on the ground – he could’ve gasped in delight when he saw the blast’s source.

“Uncle! Tohru!” The chi-wizards stood together with a shoulder bag each – a line of new Section 13 agents in suits behind them, fifteen-foot Robo-Mercs stepping forward above them. The chi-wizards aimed and fired their chi-weapons. One blast knocked back Po Kong, whose open mouth had been about to devour Jade, making her drop her prey. Another blast hit Hsi Wu’s back between his wings, clawed legs releasing Captain Black before the demon began losing altitude. Falling some distance, Black yelled. Jackie ran and entered a skid, catching the captain short of being splattered.

“Thanks Jackie,” Captain Black sighed – before a shadow fell over the men, making them look up, eyes widening. Roaring in fury, Drago raised a fiery hand above his head. Tohru aimed and fired a chi-blast from his petrified snake. Green energy blazed on Drago, making him cry out, before a membrane wrapped around him and forced his muscular arms to his chest. The chimera demon crashed to earth, on his side with his arms locked in a straightjacket pose in his membrane, scowling.

“ _Magic_ must defeat magic!” Uncle shouted, index finger raised. He opened his shoulder-bag’s flap, revealing a treasure trove of green-glowing objects. “Take your pick!”

“It’s too bad that I’m magic-proof!” Lucifer’s voice quipped loudly, making heads turn. The evil angel jumped off the concrete wall’s top with a casual ease that almost reminded Jackie of Jade, stalking forward – his eyes and body began glowing, light-wings unfurling as he moved. Jackie wildly turned his head from Uncle and Tohru – who were unblinking – back to their foe. A brief pause, before Lucifer slammed his light-emitting palms to the earth – a shockwave tore up earth and grass in its path, barrelling forward. Tohru whipped open his shoulder-bag, holding out a black stone painted with a spiral, like it would fire a spell. Not that it did. Jackie was on the verge of jumping with a cry to get out of the shockwave’s way. But the moment it barrelled into Tohru, a transparent, cyan-tinted wall flashed in front of him, the damage to the earth halting when it hit it – not even a lump of earth upturned past the shield.

Picking himself up, Shendu’s eyes widened in shock.

“What the…?!” Lucifer exclaimed in genuine surprise, brows furrowed as he stood up. Jackie, Jade and Captain Black stared, slack-jawed.

“What is everyone waiting for?!” Uncle shrieked, grabbing everyone’s attention. Face cold and humourless, Lucifer began striding forward. Roaring, Tohru ran to intercept him – Jackie noted the tablet had other symbols besides the spiral. In response to Tohru’s speed, Lucifer burst into a sprint. They ran on a collision course – which ended when a flash of the cyan barrier reversed Lucifer’s trajectory. The angel flew, and with a grunt crashed to earth near the concrete wall. Running with Jade to Uncle, Jackie both hands in the shoulder-bag.

“Uncle has added _many_ good spells to these ingredients,” the old man said as Jackie extracted a petrified rat. While jade and Black dug in, Jackie turned and fired a chi-spell from the rat’s mouth, holding it by the frozen tail. The chi-bolt blasted into Shendu’s scale-coated pectorals, making him grunt as he was forced back.

“Yikes, Unc,” Black murmured sourly, gloveless hand holding up a cat’s skull. A horrid screech made everyone turn their heads left. Bai Tza was coming at them, mermaid-like tail zigzagging the ground with catlike speed as her eyes shone murderously. “ _Yumoguigwaifaidizao-yumoguigwaifaidizao-yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …” Uncle and Jackie fired chi-spells which the Water Demon dodged, before Black’s chant unleashed a chi-bolt which engulfed her in a large snare of green magic – Bai Tza remained paralysed a moment, before with a yell her body exploded into water. While Black stared surprised, Jackie smirked, impressed; one moment before a sound like screeching metal turned their heads. In the field, the spacetime-crack’s light had intensified, making it look thicker. Inside the stadium’s walls, yellow lightning filled the sky in torrents, everyone human and demon looking skyward. With a sound like hissing glass, smaller yellow cracks started splintering from the main crack – from them, things began pressing out. A nest of bone-coloured demon-snakes’ heads, three clawed hands, a tendril with a fish-like eye on its tip, a cluster of green vines with clawed hands.

“Uncle, what is happening?!” Jackie cried out, unnatural wind beginning to whip at everyone’s hair.

“Fabric of reality here was already weak after junior-demon’s first banishment!” Uncle yelled to be heard. “The rift is fracturing into _all_ demon dimensions!”

“Our plan _exactly_!” Shendu’s voice drew everyone’s attention, eyes wide. They hadn’t noticed the Fire Demon had half-risen off the ground, eyes bright as he chuckled a hoarse, humorous laugh – one by one, Shendu’s siblings joined in the ungodly chorus, all their red eyes bright with glee, while thunder crashed.

“Demon reinforcements must not be allowed to cross through to this realm!” Uncle shouted behind Jackie’s shoulder, the archaeologist glaring at their foe.

“Then let’s send them packing,” Jade murmured over his shoulder with a smile, putting his fist in the opposite palm.

“Why bother?” Shendu hissed, voice far-too-silky as he raised a flame-wreathed hand. “You’re all _fired_!” He threw the fireball. Before the fireball would’ve incinerated them, Uncle fired a chi-spell which protected everyone with a green shield, the flames rapidly dissipating. Teeth grit, Jackie ran forward. Leaping in the air, he yelled as he swung his leg in a roundhouse kick.

“ _Argh_!” The strike made impact with the Fire Demon’s pointed cheek. Shendu crashed to earth, a second before Jackie landed in a crouch – a familiar sound of hissing air caught Jackie’s attention too late, before Wind Demon breath sent him flying backwards towards his family. Black and Jade caught him by either arm. The Robo-Mercs were already running forward, one at the demon-breath’s source. Jackie saw Xiao Fung scowl as the robot came at him, the toad-demon ducking slightly as the Robo-Merc swung a fist slightly too high – the Wind Demon leapt surprisingly-high with his toad-like limbs, throwing himself at the Robo-Merc’s chest and forcing it to crash to earth. After a second with Xiao Fung atop it, the Robo-Merc’s arms grabbed the demon’s sides and threw him – the Merc immediately got on its feet and ran at him. The newly-arrived agents started firing their weapons. Bai Tza screeched in fury before fleeing the projectiles, whilst many metres away in the air, Tso Lan easily deflected them. Po Kong scowled as she saw her opponent coming, before launching out her arms to catch the second Robo-Merc’s fists in her own – after a second in a deadlock, the Mountain Demon lifted and threw the smaller robot away.

* * *

Bits of earth caking his shoulders, Lucifer rose with a groan, an unpleasant sensation in his chest – a sensation of being _crushed_ , like his very being had been dented by the oldest beings. He saw what was going on around the field – the humans were getting an advantage now, most focused on the demon-sorcerers, except for the big guy who faced him. Lucifer’s teeth were clenched in mild agitation, before he unleashed from his mouth a blast of white energy. Tablet held up, Tohru’s sprint went un-impeded as the flashing barrier neutralised the blast like it were nothing. Reaching the archangel, Tohru swung the tablet like a club – Lucifer bent his spine and backwards-dodged, then swung a fist, which the barrier flashed to block. Lucifer recoiled a few steps with a hiss, white light shining on his knuckles like an archangel blade had cut him – after a moment, the glow and the pain receded, and he looked back. Tohru charged, yelling, tablet held like a battering ram. A timed pause, before Lucifer kicked out. His boot missed Tohru’s knee-cap, but still jerked his leg out from under him. The sumo cried out as he fell forward. Crashing on his chest beside Lucifer, who rolled his shoulders happily.

“What is that thing?” Lucifer asked of the tablet, pointing.

The fallen sumo opened his eyes, glaring into the fallen archangel’s. “I’d rather not say.”

He lunged faster than Lucifer could react, swinging the tablet two-handed – the barrier flashed and sent Lucifer hurtling backwards. The fallen archangel crashed through two rows of seats – he groaned painfully as he slowly shifted, getting off the bed of destroyed seating under himself. He saw Tohru’s bespectacled face was hard. Lucifer’s face was completely humourless, blue eyes flashing red. Yelling a war cry, Tohru charged with the tablet in one hand – before, with only Po Kong’s distant yell as warning, the giant robot smashed horizontally into him. The sumo was instantly floored.

* * *

A dark look in his glowing eyes, Xiao Fung inhaled, and promptly unleashed a howling gust of wind. Jade and Jackie’s chi-weapons – a petrified caterpillar and rat respectively – summoned a chi-dome to hold the wind back, though both their straight arms were vibrating painfully. They audibly grunted against the pain, scrunching their eyes as they poured their wills into the spells. In an instant, the dome dissolved into a bright-green flash, which shot ahead. Xiao Fung grunted as it blasted into him, sending him somersaulting comically above the stadium’s seats. The sight brought a brief smile to Jade’s face, which turned to a determined scowl as she heard hissing on her flank. Seeing Bai Tza coming fast, she aimed her chi-weapon – before someone else’s chi-blast turned Bai’s arm to falling water, making the demoness shriek.

“Jackie!” Uncle’s voice turned Jade’s head, seeing him and Black with chi-weapons and agents with firearms fighting off Shendu. “We must place the remaining tablets at compass points above ground!” With his free hand, he promptly opened his shoulder-bag’s flap. Revealing clear glimpses of black stone, and half-obscured paint symbols.

Jackie came running forward, but Jade closed the distance between herself and Uncle a moment ahead of him, extracting the black stones as she shouted breathlessly. “You guys keep feather-boy and the demons busy, I’ll get them there ASAP!” A beastly snarl turned their heads. Levitating, the fanged-faced Fire Demon unleashed yellow eye-beams and twin fireballs from his hands. The Chans raised their chi-weapons in unison, a chi-dome dispersing the flames and halting the eye-beams – as soon as the beams and dome disintegrated, Jade shot a chi-blast with a violent arm movement. It hit Shendu’s eyes, still yellow with the Pig Talisman, directly, and he unleashed a painfully-loud scream as he reeled in the air – yellow smoke poured from his eyes as his hands covered them. Flying backwards, Shendu harshly brushed a large hanging banner hanging on the concrete, clawed slashing it horizontally before it crumpled onto the grass – Jade noted the remnant of a smiling Lou Seal on the banner, before the banner glowed white and its image darkened, a mass of shadow rising off it. As the Chan Clan stared in shock, the mass gained colours and solidity, except for the gouges raked through half its head where there was nothing but air, solid grey replacing flesh and bone where the figure’s body was gouged and slashed. A ten-foot Lou Seal had formed, the anthropomorphic seal mascot missing half his face so he had only one milky, pupiless eye; mouth opening in a truly _demonic_ screech to the bloodred sky, strips of his slashed and broken being undulating like tentacles.

“Rat Talisman – motion to the motionless,” Jade deadpanned her conclusion, all three Chans staring saucer-eyed until her uncles cast her matching glares – she smiled weakly without consciously registering. The Lou Seal-creature stopped its screeching, creepy eye noticing the humans as its shredded arms went somewhat slack. A pause passed in which it regarded them. Then it lunged with that horrid screech, shredded arms with fuzzy, clawless fingers outstretched towards them. Jackie and Uncle immediately fired their chi-weapons while Jade turned and sprinted, tablets tucked under her arm.

* * *

Dirt smearing his face, Tohru groaned as he rose from the earth – he removed and wiped his glasses with a finger, straining to see without them, before a shriek drew his gaze.

“Jade?” Forty feet from him, she was sprinting across the baseball field, with some of Uncle’s tablets under her arm – behind her, Bai Tza was slithering with feline speed after her, and rapidly closing the distance. Tohru responded after one second, eyebrows knitting as he growled darkly – after a brief glance for any sign of Lucifer, the sumo roared and threw his stone, spinning like a frisbee. It crossed the Water Demon’s path, a flash of its barrier reducing Bai Tza to water while also forcing the slosh back.

“Now you’re out of kryptonite…” Tohru heard Lucifer’s voice – before he could turn, the angel’s hand grabbed his shirt and threw him. The sumo yelled, flying up to the air like a baseball. He crashed back-first into one of the highest seating rows, crushing seats underneath himself – he groaned, instantly dazed.

“Come back here, you!” Po Kong boomed, stomping on her undersized feet after Jade, each step causing a small tremor. Without stopping, Jade aimed and fired her chi-caterpillar behind herself. She missed – with a loud grunt, Po Kong slammed a foot through the earth. A tremor worse than any before it made the ground vibrate under the running woman, to the point she almost tripped and fell. A rearmost section of a stadium wall collapsed in a cloud of smoke, cracks spreading through neighbouring walls’ concrete. Shafts of earth rose under Jade, who jumped and hopped between the moving, uneven shaft-tops, barely slowing a beat, even as the earth upturned higher the further ahead of her.

“Uncle, what was that?!” Jackie shouted over his shoulder as the tremor settled, before throwing up a chi-dome just in time to block the indigo gravity-ray.

“Mountain Demon – control over seismic waves,” Uncle said, while firing chi-spell after chi-spell against the Lou Seal monster.

“ _Sir, requesting orders_?” an electronic voice yelled through Captain Black’s earpiece.

“Standby!” he replied, before a shadow fell, making him look up. Shendu was floating over their heads, apparently ignoring them as he went towards the giant demoness, and the mess of uplifted earth ahead of her.

* * *

The major slammed his fist to the desk. “Dang it, I’m not asking that we nuke United States soil!” Shouting into the phone in Captain Black’s commandeered office, spittle could’ve flown from Gómez’s mouth, half-ignoring the agent who stood guard at the door (no doubt there because Black wanted him constantly watched). Calming somewhat – but no more than somewhat – the major rubbed two fingers over his eyes as he stressed, “Sir, I cannot confirm nor deny that I am supporting Captain Black’s magic claims, but what I can _assure_ you is that he and those Chan civilians are dabbling with something that could potentially bring an end to America! You and your wife could wake up tomorrow and see nothing but a radioactive slag-heap out the window, sir. _That_ is what’s going on here, and Captain Black is treating this like it’s a darn sting operation!”

The brass’s reply made the major growl in exasperation. “I’m well-aware of that, sir – all I’m asking is we use a non-nuclear air attack to neutralise this problem, while it’s contained in one place with close to zero civilian casualties. _Or_ we can wait until it balloons to cover the whole of San Francisco.” A pause in which the office was quiet as the brass responded.

“I understand,” Gómez said a bit more calmly. “A half-hour window, then if Captain Black’s way hasn’t worked, we’ll bring in the big guns. Thank you, sir.” He promptly returned the phone to its holder, then looked at the blonde agent by the door. “You, son – Captain Black sure as heck won’t listen to anything that comes out of my mouth. Tell him and his men on the ground they’ve got thirty minutes to sort this whole thing out.” The agent said nothing, but Major Gómez saw the subtle hints in his facial cues – the curl of a lip and slanting of a brow – before he walked out of the office door. _Snotty prick._ The major turned his head to the bank of monitors on the office wall – specifically a vertical strip of active monitors, relaying fresh helmet-cam footage of the stadium carnage which Gómez couldn’t make words for.

* * *

Jade ran up the sloping, uplifted ground. Soon, broken seats and concrete mixed with earth where the uplift had destroyed part of the stadium seating. A booming grunt reminded Jade of the giant demon crawling on all fours up the slope after her. She stopped herself short off running over the uplift’s cliff-edge, the upwards-climbing earth sharply giving way to open air, shreds of dislodged seats and metal lying ahead of her. Looking down, Jade noted the ten-foot chasm separating the cliff-face from the surviving rearmost part of the stadium wall extended further than she could see, shadow swallowing up any glimpse of the bottom with the hellishly-dimmed daylight – it wouldn’t be easy for even her to jump, and she considered if putting the first tablet here would be effective enough. She didn’t get to think long, before a breeze of air made her look over her shoulder, gasping. She saw Shendu flying forward, fast, one second before he breathed orange fire like a flamethrower. Jade acted – she jumped off the cliff-edge, half-a-second before fire bathed everything solid for several metres.

In shadow, Jade clung to the cliff-face with fingers hooked into the earth, either sole precariously on a ridge, while fire glowed and blazed over the chasm-mouth above – when the fire cut to leave bloodred sky, her senses screamed danger, well-aware of how exposed she was. The sound of Shendu’s snarl as he floated forth, made the woman inside the crevasse below his feet crane her head. His eyes found her instantly, or he’d already known she was here as he twisted his levitating body to face her – fire filled Shendu’s open maw, and Jade’s heart skipped a beat. But then a good-chi beam fired into the Fire Demon for somewhere behind the uplift, making him grunt in surprise above jade, before he was yanked from above the chasm-mouth, out of sight. After a one-second pause, Jade sighed in relief – her emotion didn’t last as the earth rumbled, making her eyes widen. Green, clawed fingers came into view, curling on the chasm-mouth’s side, Po Kong’s bun and hungry eyes appearing next.

“Crud,” Jade murmured, eyes wide – turning her head, she saw half-attached seats hanging where the surviving part of the stadium wall started, at least several metres diagonally across from her head; too high to jump. “I hope this works…” She held the glowing chi-caterpillar up, tablets tucked under the other arm while the demon made bits of earth start raining – the green blast hit the cliff face. Jade shot diagonally upward across the chasm, in the same moment that Po Kong lunged her claw in, barely missing the flying woman. The woman shot above the first row of seats, arcing to land hard atop the further-back seats. Grunting from how her back had landed atop a seat-rest, Jade quickly gathered the tablets that had fallen in the seating aisle’s floor, before shooting a cocky grin at her adversary.

“Don’t chase what you’re too slow to catch!” she taunted in a sing-song voice – and while the Mountain Demon groaned in rage, the woman turned and sprinted, tablets tucked to her chest.

In less than ten seconds, Jade was running to the stadium’s concrete press box at the nosebleed section, which was caved in on one side. She vaulted over the viewing space’s low concrete wall into the box’s shadow, sprinting in without missing a the far wall, she propped a tablet atop a desk, its painted face – featuring outward-radiating rings as its main symbol – facing into the stadium. Jade could see the paint’s colour was difficult to discern – it had looked red outside, but seemed to fade to blue in here.

“That’s one,” Jade said, smirking – before at her eye’s corner, she barely caught Tso Lan’s distant figure appearing in the viewing space, prompting her to move aside before his indigo ray would’ve hit her. Teeth grit, Jade retaliated with a chi-blast, then ran out.

* * *

Uncle was firing a green beam at the vertical dimension-crack, good-chi blotting its yellow light but not banishing the demon-appendages. Jackie and Captain Black were shooting volleys of chi-bolts. Each of which Bai Tza was slipping and weaving to avoid with her piscine body – when what few Section 13 agents were still standing fired rockets and lasers at her, she shifted her shoulders to avoid those, and threw water-blasts in their directions, before resuming dodging the chi-spells. Only a shift in the light alerted Jackie to Lucifer approaching behind his back. With a cry, the archaeologist grabbed Black and leapt sideways, half-a-second before a white-light crescent shot through the space where they’d been, causing the stadium’s concrete to explode far ahead. Barely catching his breath, Jackie turned his head, but didn’t catch a glimpse of Lucifer before crying out, barely raising his chi-weapon fast enough to block Shendu’s eye-beams – on his flank, Black was blasting at Bai Tza as she got up-close. Lucifer slammed his light-filled palms to the earth again, a shockwave rapidly tearing towards them. Jackie promptly rolled sideways, grabbing Captain Black mid-roll as they both landed in a crouch, earth and grass tearing up where they’d been.

“Jackie…!” Black’s voice drew Jackie’s attention, to the stone tablet Tohru had used, lying face-up on the grass a few feet from them. Turning their heads, they both saw Lucifer striding towards them, face inhumanly cool. Teeth grit, Jackie immediately acted – throwing the stone like a frisbee. He saw Lucifer’s agitated face in the split-second before cyan flashed, violently throwing him with a yell. He shot with bullet-speed into the nearby concrete, which caved like a biscuit under his back before he fell forward to the dirt. Jackie smirked, before a hissing sound made him turn his head, to see Xiao Fung inhaling, open mouth and eyes facing them. Jackie sprinted, pulling Black into a parallel sprint with a yank on his black coat, and lifting a surprised Uncle into a bridal-style hold without stopping. Xiao Fung was turning his head after them as they ran horizontally to him, gust-breath chasing them. Around the field, one or two agents not lying in the grass were tossed to the air by the typhoon-breath, yelling. Above, Tso Lan threw the damaged Robo-Merc he’d been grappling into the wind, which horizontally blasted the machine into the stadium’s concrete wall – the Robo-Merc’s piloting agent was ejected into the wind, screaming, before the pinned machine crackled and exploded. The targeted trio reached the tablet, which Jackie breathlessly lifted up to shield them about a millisecond before the Wind Demon’s breath would’ve blasted them, a semi-cylindrical cyan barrier shielding them.

“Stay close,” Jackie instructed, glancing to Black and Uncle, before he ran _into_ the gust. Xiao Fung’s open-mouthed face shifted, eyes widening as Jackie yelled. The shielded archaeologist was almost upon him in two seconds. He rammed the cyan shield into Xiao Fung, the demon yelling in pain as it threw him. His green-and-lilac, warped-limbed body hurtled in an aerial arc, crashing into the stadium’s seating behind him – one second later, a jet of flame suddenly erupted from thin air. Jackie cried out, re-raised the tablet, which thankfully shielded him against the fiery torrent. He looked diagonally-upward at the flame’s source. He noticing at the fire’s starting point, its orange glow seemed to be curving over invisible curves and contours – as if sensing Jackie’s thoughts, Shendu materialised where those highlights had marked the demon’s features.

“The Talisman of Invisibility,” Jackie murmured, eyebrows knitted as he glared. Shendu cut off his fire-breath, but had seen the attack a split-second too late, as good-chi knocked him out of the air. The Fire Demon crashed to earth on his leg, hip and elbow. Captain Black’s aimed cat’s-skull was pouring green smoke between its teeth, a smirk on his bearded face. At the Lou Seal monster’s scream, Jackie turned his head to his other flank, screaming too late as sausage-like fingers on half-shredded arms seized and lifted the archaeologist. Uncle and Captain Black moved to run forward, but a strip of the entity batted them aside, guided like a third limb. Grunting and kicking at air, Jackie registered half-faced Lou’s other tendril-shreds pushing the dropped tablet away from them.

“Uncle, the tablet doesn’t work!” Jackie yelled over his shoulder.

“Of course it does not work, it was not made for _seal in shirt_!” Uncle shouted like it should be obvious. Jackie’s grunts became pained as Lou Seal wrapped its tendril-strips around Jackie’s legs, squeezing them tightly while the strips still climbing higher – the archaeologist’s eyes bulged when the monster opened its mouth wide enough to swallow his head, making Jackie scream.

_PCHOW!_

Tohru’s chi-blast fired from the nosebleed section. When it hit, the banner-monster screeched horribly, green chi blazing as it dropped Jackie and recoiled. On his rear, Jackie let out a needed sigh of air – his ears registered Shendu’s super-speed blur knocking Black and Uncle away too late, before the Fire Demon’s eye-beams made the earth explode under Jackie and send him flying. He hit the dirt, pain wracking his body, but his senses were instantly stirred by the familiar giant footsteps rapidly growing closer. The large shadow fell over Jackie’s back, the archaeologist on his hands and knees – before he spun and threw the tablet again.

Shendu shifted his sloping-shouldered body, letting the tablet flying past, before training his blazing eyes on the human he towered above. “Oh, dear… It appears you have lost your armour!”


	5. Unburied

Captain Black rubbed his bald head as he stood up, opening his green eyes quickly as the current situation’s urgency struck him. Looking around, he saw Uncle blasting spells at the Lou Seal monster, which was terrorising several agents below the destroyed Robo-Merc, whilst Shendu’s back faced the captain as he fired eye-beams that drove Jackie back. Gritting his teeth, Black started forcing his body to move, but halted at the sight above. The Moon Demon was descending, his patterned, half-human face’s glowing eyes looking _right_ at him, robes billowing. Black shot to his feet and fired with the cat’s-skull. Tso Lan shifted slightly to dodge the shot, then raised one of his smaller arms and fired an indigo blast. It sent the cat’s skull shooting from Captain Black’s gloveless hand, force hitting like the hand had caught on a speeding truck – Black clutched his sprained wrist with a cry, then glared at the Moon Demon and swung his gloved fist. Standing over twice Black’s height, Tso Lan caught the fist in his larger clawed hand. Indigo energy crackled on the pale-grey hand, before the gloved hand began crumpling inward, metal screeching. As the reverse-gravitational pressure increased, the glove began tearing at the seams against metal joints and pistons, withdrawing closer to the mechanical piece’s core.

“This is no place for a one-handed man,” Tso Lan murmured in a tone that would’ve shattered a schoolboy, throwing Black’s prosthetic-handed arm away from himself – Black sharply swung another fist back into Tso Lan’s waist. The Moon Demon grunted and shot backwards in the air from the blow, the cat’s skull glowing in Black’s organic hand as the man glared defiantly.

“I’ll take a tin hand over slow reflexes anyday!”

Black aimed the chi-weapon and fired. Tso Lan pivoted his shoulders, green beam shooting past, then raised his indigo-wreathed larger hand and threw an energy blast. Captain Black shot another chi-beam. Green and indigo met and clashed mid-air. Tso Lan’s red eyes narrowed, his corded hand’s muscles seeming to tense with added effort. The indigo energy pushed through. And threw Captain Black backwards, the bearded man barely missing Uncle’s back before hitting the ground.

Jackie quickly hopped backwards from Shendu’s heat-beams to Uncle’s side, landing in a combative stance, at which point Uncle’s voice immediately commanded the long-haired archaeologist’s attention; “Jackie! Where is the tablet?!”

“Ah- I lost it, Uncle!” Jackie replied, barely shifting his eyes off his opponent. Not a moment later, Uncle fired a chi-blast behind himself, knocking Shendu back, quickly firing another which made Po Kong audibly grunt, then-

 _Whack-whack!_ ” _Ow_!”

“You must get it back!” Uncle shrieked ambiguously, the archaeologist practically _feeling_ his elderly uncle’s finger being pointed. “ _Jade_!” At Uncle’s call, Jackie craned his head to look at the silhouette racing along the stadium walls’ roofs. “You must position _all_ the tablets quickly!”

“I’m almost done!” Jade’s voice shouted back, before crouching to prop a tablet.

Hearing Shendu’s growl, Captain Black looked at the downed yet still bungalow-sized Fire Demon, just as he threw a diagonally-aimed fireball with his hands. “ _JADE_!”

She turned her head on the nosebleed section with seconds left.

 _KRZZT!_ As the fireball closed, a storm of green lightning blazed for thirty feet around Jade’s position, dissipating the fireball – the lightning-forks travelled in a vertical strip down the stadium arena to the ground, in the two seconds before they vanished again. Back on his digitigrade feet, Shendu disappeared in a green blur of superspeed just as Uncle fired a chi-blast which hit nothing.

“Anti-demon, grounding spell,” Uncle explained with a look over at Black, as if sensing his bewilderment, and then at Jackie. “Tablets _cannot_ be moved when they are placed at compass points!” Remembering the battlefield, Captain Black looked at his damaged metal hand, the internal motors whirring slightly as he flexed the round-jointed fingers with an involuntary shudder from the prosthetic – it was good enough, he decided, before turned and leaping at Tso Lan to punch him with it. Jackie’s ears picked up Po Kong’s approaching stomps long before he saw the warehouse-sized demon lumbering forward. And he immediately took another chi-artefact from Uncle’s shoulder bag to fire at her. Green chi blazed across the Mountain Demon’s breast-less upper-chest, ugly jaws opened in a snarl.

* * *

Jade sprinted to the foot of a floodlight. She saw as she propped the final tablet that its main symbol was a radius of straight lines extending outward, like a one-dimensional explosion icon. Smirking, Jade put her thumb and index finger to her mouth and whistled. Uncle, who was keeping a demon at bay with chi-blasts, turned his head in acknowledgement, seeming faraway on the demon battlefield. A horrible shriek made Jade abruptly turn her head. Monster-Lou was scuttling on his half-shredded arms and legs up the seating towards her, movement like a tentacle sci-fi-horror movie she’d seen. Gasping, Jade aimed and fired her chi-caterpillar. The chi-spell just missed the monster, which barely noticed, maw unnaturally-wide open as it rolled over seats and upwards. Jade grit her teeth, tensed. She stood, waiting for the creature to come upon her – then she leapt under its whipping and undulating mass of shreds, planting her soles against the mostly-solid Giants shirt, and propelling it to the air. The creature arced in the air, rolling like a screeching tumbleweed down the seats. Jade stood, smirking confidently, and the smile was still in place as she turned her head to scan the upper-stadium, before sharply falling.

“What?” Forty-five degrees across from her, she saw no hint of colour in the damaged press box’s viewing space, no sign whatsoever there was a tablet still there in the darkness.

* * *

Captain Black and Tso Lan hurtled through the air, the demon’s larger hands holding the bald-headed man’s, chi-skull in Black’s hand glowing near Tso Lan’s face. Tso Lan halted their trajectory in the air, then fired a gravity-beam which shot Captain Black off him. Having landed near Po Kong’s back-and-forth staggering lower-body, Black groaned as he forced himself to get up – green eyes glared, teeth grit as he fired a chi-bolt. It hit Tso Lan square in the banded-waist, ramming him backwards into the stadium seating that had been behind him. Black was alerted and whirled around at the Water Demon’s hiss as she approaching behind him, but a volley of chi-shots from someone else prompted her to angrily scarper – as if on cue a second later, a vibration and ringtone from Captain Black’s overcoat pocket made him extract and answer the box phone.

“This better be important.”

The response he got from the other end made his eyes widen. “ _What_?! He can’t be serious!”

“Are your men tracking the two other demons?” Uncle’s voice made Captain Black look behind his shoulder, the old man standing with hands behind his back like a demon war weren’t raging around them.

Black turned and shouted quickly with the phone half-lowered; “Yes, I need to be at the van outside to authorise them, but I think we’ve got more-” _Whack._ ” _Ow_!”

“We need _all_ the demons to be here at the _right moment_!” Uncle shrieked directly in Captain Black’s face, index finger between their chins; before he said somewhat calmly, “You must listen _very_ carefully.”

* * *

As the woman sprinted along the stadium, a chi-blast made Shendu shoot back and levitate a frightening meagre several metres from her, though thankfully his back faced her as he flew back into the fray from whence he’d come. Sprinting like she were running for her life, Jade only ever shifted her brown eyes from in front of herself to check and make sure nothing was targeting her. Reaching her target, she ran from the side in front of the press box’s stadium view, then vaulted into the shadowed space. She gasped in horror, seeing only bare, dark walls and corner where a tablet and a desk should have been, thunder grumbling and yellow flashing outside as if to accentuate the problem.

“Oh, no…” Jade groaned, before a rasping voice made her head turn.

“Looking for something?”

In the blackness, two large red eyes were glowing at her, a second before their winged, grey-skinned owner shot out, hissing like a striking cobra. Hsi Wu flew into Jade faster than she could react, clawed legs kicking her backwards in the confined space.

“ _Urgh_!” Jade’s back collided with the rubble-wall at the press box’s collapsed side, edges digging dangerously into her back and spine before she slumped forward – she didn’t have a chance to recover, barely time to gasp, as the Sky Demon was upon her again, feet grabbing her shoulders and flying away with her.

Hsi Wu flew out of the press box towards the sky, snickering mischievously as he carried Jade underneath his body, one claw clamped around her non-free wrist. Wind whipping at her short hair, Jade gasped in fear as they flew above the stadium, the thunderclaps growing frighteningly close to them as yellow lightning flashed around them, and she promptly began pawing. Pawing until her hand grasped and pulled Hsi Wu’s grey wing membrane by the edge, making the Sky Demon grunt as Jade’s senses said they were losing altitude. When they’d fallen to about half their former height, with a furious hiss, the writhing imp-demon released Jade and shot skyward; leaving her to yell at her freefall from a still-deadly height, until something large and grey broke Jade’s fall. Jade groaned atop her proverbial cushion, feeling like she’d landed on an elevated rock-bed – sitting up quickly and looking around, she discovered why it felt like they were moving, when she saw she was atop the rough hair of the moving Po Kong. Remembering her opponent, Jade turned her head. She saw Hsi Wu’s winged silhouette by the far stadium wall, curving out of an aerial dive into a straight beeline – he’d be upon his oblivious sister’s head and upon Jade in mere seconds. Jade raised her chi-weapon holding arm, only to gasp in horror when she found her hand held no chi-caterpillar. Hsi Wu swept above her, clawed feet snatching Jade by her shoulders from the demon-hair like a falcon with a mouse. Jade turned her head to look over her shoulder, scowling. Hsi Wu craned his upside-down head to meet her gaze, eyes glowing in the shadow his own body cast – his elfish-looking ears, the bushy eyebrows, the three antennae coming from his forehead and the grin full of flat teeth, were exactly like Jade remembered.

“Where’s the tablet, Hsi Wu?” Jade spat loudly over the wind.

“By now, it must be pieces on the ground,” Hsi Wu rasped in a subtle sing-song tone which boiled Jade’s blood. He craned his head away, snickering – and when Jade shifted her gaze ahead, she yelled at the top of her lungs. They were flying straight towards a floodlight, the large thing’s top-corner marking the point below which Jade’s body would be splattered on the panel. But Hsi Wu’s flight-path curved up and he tossed Jade before she could perish, her body landing painfully at the floodlight’s foot – she moved to get up immediately, a second before the flying grey blur shot forth and knocked her off the roof’s edge. Jade was falling, screaming, her eyes so wide tears could’ve been trailing above her, the parking lot’s tarmac or otherwise a protrusion in the stadium no doubt rapidly rising to break her body – but the flying demon snatched her out of her fall, appearing again from seemingly nowhere.

“What’s the matter?” Hsi Wu purred tauntingly, lifting the large fist which held Jade by both wrists so they were at eye-level. “No new tricks up your sleeves?” Jade growled angrily, before bringing up both legs and kicking out. Hsi Wu caught her shoes’ soles in his free claw’s palm. But Jade twisted her trapped hands slightly, palms’ carpal bones joined. And her hands slid free of the Sky Demon’s raised fist, her body curving backwards while the surprised demon’s grip on her feet enabled her to swing her body trapeze-like below him. Her hands grabbed reptilian tail and yanked. Hsi Wu cried out, a second before Jade’s foot escaped his loosened claw and kicked his noseless face. That made him release Jade fully, though she held onto his tail in the air, inwardly hoping it wouldn’t detach. The extra weight made Hsi Wu grunt and rasp urgently as his flight constantly rose and fell, leathery wings struggling to keep them aloft.

Smirking beside the tail’s tip, Jade taunted, “Remember that time you didn’t want your tail attaching?” Hsi Wu shot a particularly-menacing grimace back. Then he kicked a foot into Jade’s shoulder, hard enough to dislodge her. Jade was in freefall again, screaming – and somehow she doubted Wu would break her fall again.

Sprinting through a row of seats, Tohru fell into a skid, huge arms catching Jade short of a bone-crunching end.

In the sumo’s arms, Jade sighed before smiling up at her friend. “Thanks, T.” Not three seconds later, Tohru was lowered Jade back onto her. “Hsi Wu moved one of the tablets; we need to get it back!” She pounded a fist in her palm.

“How could he have moved it?” Tohru exclaimed, eyes widening behind his glasses. “The spell on those tablets prevents the demons from moving them once they’ve been planted!”

“He moved the desk,” Jade murmured, crossing her arms as she brooded, ignoring the sounds of chi-spells and demon-magic which blasted and buzzed in the stadium. “Gotta _think_ … Hsi Wu likes mischief…”

“And high places,” Tohru murmured.

Jade’s eyes widened as something clicked, making her grin at the sumo. “That’s it! We need to get higher so we can take a look around!” She gasped not a second later at the incoming attack, Tohru summoning a chi-dome in time to deflect the water-bomb, before he fired a blast at its source. Bai Tza hissed and scarpered from the chi-spell, a split-second before a follow-up blasted her to falling water.

“Take this,” Tohru said, tossing a small object which the woman caught one-handed – a palm-sized snail shell – before he extracted a small vial from his overalls and began pouring its contents on his chi-tentacle while chanting.

“ _Zi jan gat gou zin jau_ , z _i jan gat gou zin jau_.” The tentacle glowed brightly. “Hold on.” Tohru pointed and a chi-beam fired onto Jade – almost-immediately, she began lifting off the ground, making her cry out slightly as Tohru guided her ascent with the tentacle.

After a few moments, Jade’s ascent stopped in the bloodred sky, when she was higher up than anything in the stadium, at which point Tohru’s distant voice shouted; “Do you see it?” Jade turned, pivoting her suspended, glowing body as she scanned around. At the same moment, on the ground, Tohru used a chi-snake in his free hand to blast an interested-seeming Xiao Fung. After several seconds of scanning, Jade signalled down to Tohru with one arm. He complied, precariously lowering the chi-tentacle. Jade was descending with the speed of a falling leaf, when she gasped as her eyes caught something new. In one of the parking lot’s trees, she _just_ caught a hint of bluish-green standing out.

“Tohru! Outta the park!” she shouted down. Tohru nodded, the second before Hsi Wu shot from nowhere, knocking him away. The chi-tentacle hit the floor, glow fading. Jade gasped in horror, the green chi-shroud on her fizzling and dying. Half-a-second later, Jade was falling, screaming.

Groaning among the seats he’d landed on, Tohru didn’t have a chance to get up before Hsi Wu swooped upon him, grabbing both his wrists. A couple inches separated their faces, one glowering and one leering, large claws pinning Tohru’s wrists – with an angry yell, Tohru threw Hsi Wu off. The Sky Demon flew with bullet-like speed, and dodged the volley of chi-bolts Tohru threw at him, his sniggering taunting the chi-wizard. At one point, Hsi Wu even looped in the air, landing in a crouch by the floodlight’s far foot. Tohru promptly extracted a petrified lizard from his overalls, firing offensive volleys with both weapons while chanting.

“ _Yumoguigwaifaidizao_ , _yumoguigwaifaidizao_.”

Hsi Wu scowled as the challenge doubled, swinging his hovering body left and right before a chi-blast hit his emaciated-looking torso, knocking him down on his back among the seats. Tohru didn’t waste a second, turning and firing the tentacle’s chi-spell. It halted Jade just before she would’ve fallen past the stadium outer-wall’s top, making her audibly sigh before she turned her head and nodded at Tohru – he began marching up past the seating rows towards the walls’ tops, slowly lowering Jade into the parking lot as he did. In seemingly no time, Jade lowered to the tarmac on her two feet, at which point Tohru cut the levitation spell and its glow on her vanished – she grinned and shot a thumbs-up at him, before sprinting away.

Tohru was smiling back from the stadium’s top, but it vanished as a hiss caught his attention. Hsi Wu was recovering, glowering over at where Jade had disappeared, in the second before he took wing and shot forward. Protective instinct stirring with anger, Tohru fired with the chi-tentacle. Its green beam caught and suspended the Sky Demon, whose red eyes bugged in surprise as he gave a grunt. Yelling, Tohru swept his tentacle-holding hand outward, and sending Hsi Wu hurtling into the stadium like a ball on string. The Sky Demon was splattered against rough green, his limbs splayed while his torso fit between the shoulder blades – Po Kong turned her horrid face at the disturbance on her back, glowing eyes spotting Tohru. Teeth grit, Tohru fired again.

* * *

Jackie sprinted fast across the field, ears half-filled by the sounds of heat-beams and hissing water hissing as Uncle occupied the demons. The tablet lay face-up in grass and earth, about thirty yards ahead of the approaching archaeologist. Roughly the same distance in the opposite direction, Lucifer rolled his shoulders, and after a split-second his wings and ethereal light reappeared. The angel’s red-eyed face now held a slight dark look. Winds started blowing at Jackie’s face and neck-length hair, appearing from nowhere and worsening every second, pushing Jackie to run harder and faster. Then pure-white lightning vertically struck Lucifer, and he instantaneously vanished. Jackie’s eyes widened in surprise, but he didn’t halt or slow down even as thunder rumbled. He was ten feet from the tablet-

_PSH-CHAW!_

-when lightning struck a foot from Jackie’s back, leaving Lucifer standing there, and the angel threw a light-wave which sent Jackie flying. It was like a bomb explosion had hit Jackie’s back, ribs bending and creaking – but somehow his eyes caught the tablet’s image as he went over it. In a millisecond his arm reached, fingers grasping the tablet. Jackie hit the earth nearly fifteen yards away, bumping and rolling for several metres before coming to a stop.

Jackie lost track of time, fading in and out of unconsciousness. An old part of him wanted to wholly enter unconsciousness as the world of grass, fire and bloodred faded in and out with his fluttering eyelids – then he heard Uncle’s voice begin calling from the depths of his dreams, and it prompted Jackie to fully stir back to consciousness with a weak cry. It had been years since Uncle had appeared in his dreams, and he didn’t really want the vacation to end.

“How did I get knocked out?” Jackie groaned as he sat up amidst chaotic noise, free hand clutching his head – before a forearm with a rolled-up sleeve backhanded into his left shoulder, sending him literally flying backwards, yelling. Jackie crashed with a sound among broken stadium seating, groaning as he felt like he’d been splayed on sharp rocks – but he immediately began pushing his torso up. “That’s how.” His eyes widened, spirits rising when he noticed what his right hand was still clutching. “The tablet!”

Lucifer strode from the field to the walking track, looking a little too coolly up at Jackie. Eyebrows low, Jackie leapt, somersaulting in the air. Landing two-footed on the track, Jackie didn’t waste a second before charging ram-like with the tablet as Tohru had. But Lucifer vanished in a lightning-strike, one second before Jackie ran into the empty space he’d been occupying, halting to gape in surprise. A second before typhoon-like wind pummelled into Jackie, making him stagger – he raised a leg and struggled to bring it back to earth, fearing the wind could lift him like a kite. Acting on instinct, Jackie held the tablet facing against the wind – its cyan barrier appeared almost instantly, and Jackie almost lost his footing as the wind stopped touching him. Jackie opened his brown eyes, surprised.

_BOOM!_

The sudden thunderclap made Jackie crane his head, raising the tablet – half-a-second before pure-white lightning bolts were raining down on a horizontally-aligned cyan energy-roof. The lightning shot from a pure-white patch, the bloodred clouds rippling and writhing around it – Jackie noted it was a single continuous stream of lightning, as if a furious thunder-god were hurling spears of electricity against his magic shield. He was thankful the lightning wasn’t exerting any pressure on his arms holding the tablet. A familiar raspy yell made Jackie turn his head, eyes going saucer-wide. He saw Shendu’s huge back hurtling towards him from a chi-blast. Keeping the tablet above his head, Jackie sprinted in the opposite direction, which was roughly along the track. Despite pumping his legs at full-speed, Shendu’s huge body was still skidding and tumbling like a tremendous rockfall of scales and muscle – Jackie cried out as he felt the approaching mass’s impact start upturning the earth, and he leapt. The archaeologist barely remembered to land crouching, before the Fire Demon’s man-sized head and neck crashing near Jackie, eyes thankfully closed – not wanting to wait for those hate-filled eyes to open, Jackie ran on.

Hearing Po Kong’s roar, Jackie paused – Lucifer’s lightning-bolts also strangely ceased. The building-size Mountain Demon was thundering fast towards Uncle on her undersized feet. Her foot slammed the ground again. Jackie cried out over the noise as the fresh quake made everything vibrate. Not five seconds later, Jackie was half-speechless to see the Sky Demon stuck like a starfish to Po Kong’s back – as if unstuck by Jackie’s gaze, Hsi Wu fell and hit the ground. His red eyes opened, looking at Jackie dazedly. Perhaps from seeing the white lightning bolts, his face became clear when he pointed and shouted.

“Lucifer! The woman – you must stop her!” Jackie barely noticed Lucifer’s lightning-strikes had stopped when he heard thunder rumbling, the winds immediately dying.

“Jade…” Jackie murmured, eyes wide. The sound of blasts made him turn his head. Po Kong, Bai Tza and Xiao Fung were all ascending the new small mountain that Po Kong’s quake had was halfway-up that uplifted mountain’s slope, struggling to pull free one leg that was buried below the knee in earth. Jackie’s mouth was open, and he glanced from the sight ahead to the stadium exit Jade had taken, then back – gritting his teeth as he made his choice, the long-haired man sprinted forward.

* * *

Yellow lightning regularly flashed above the damaged stadium, as did smaller bursts of green light – it almost-morbidly reminded Captain Black, watching from by the van with several other agents, of concert lights.

“Captain Black!” The bearded agent turned his head in surprise. On his and the agents’ right, Jade Chan was sprinting forward, halting several feet away in a rather agent-like way before speaking breathlessly. “Did you do what Uncle told you?”

“We’ve got four minutes before it’s done,” Captain Black said quickly, holding up four fingers with his good hand, before fully turning his body as he spoke gravely. “And on top of that, if we don’t end this demon problem in as much time, there won’t be anyone left to solve it.”

Jade exclaimed with her brows furrowed, “What do you-?” She stopped, eyes widening as she worked it out in her head. “ _Major Gómez_!”

“There’s officially _no room for chance_!” the captain barked over the stadium-noise and the storm like he were addressing one of his agents rather than someone he’d met as a little girl.

Jade nodded. “I’m gonna need to be quick about it. Whatever happens, Uncle says, don’t let any of the demons out of the stadium until he’s done!”

“On it!” Captain Black responded, agents cocking their weapons around his shoulders whilst the bearded man himself held up his cat’s skull, before Jade sprinted away.

* * *

Uncle stood upright atop the new-formed mountain, firing chi-spell after chi-spell at approaching demons, making the Water Demon recoil with a hiss – his stance was vertically-straight with one leg trapped between two uplifts. Shendu flew forward with his arms spread behind Bai Tza and Xiao Fung, the smaller demons turning their heads at their levitating brother’s approach – the Fire Demon promptly formed a fireball between his two palms and threw it. Uncle fired a good-chi blast which caught the fireball a few metres short of incinerating him, a protective magic wall making the fire sharply bend into a vertical upwards trajectory. But Uncle hadn’t noticed Xiao Fung had been inhaling while he was distracted, realising a split-second before the toad-demon whistled out a howling gust.

“ _Ai ya_!” Uncle exclaimed as the wind beat at him savagely, getting in his mouth and making clothes violently ripple, threatening to actually blow him loose if it didn’t make his skin tear free from his bones first.

“ _Uncle_!” Jackie yelled, charging forward in distress, before a _pchow_ sound made him stop.

“ _Argh_ …!”

“ _Urgh_!” the Wind Demon cried out when the latest chi-bolt hit him, wind-breath cutting as he fell sideways – earth thundering under her, the much-larger Mountain Demon was backing as she took chi-spells to the front, pudgy arms raised to block the blasts, until the third chi-bolt she took unbalanced her with a yell. Tohru was the source, standing some way across the field, glowing chi-squid held ramrod-straight. Now standing, Shendu whirled around, draconic face twisted murderously – sighting a foe, he fired his Pig Talisman heat-beams. The held-up tablet’s shield blocked the beams as Jackie didn’t let up his sprint. Descending, Tso Lan with an arm-swipe fired an energy-beam. The tablet’s shield absorbed that as well, the archaeologist not slowing as he sprinted past Drago’s membrane-bound form near the rift – _partly_ membrane-bound, with tears forming as the hybridised demon struggled. Shendu fired from one clawed hand a white energy-blast. Jackie shifted sideways to let the blast hit the earth, not considering which Talisman-power it might have been – he leapt high enough in the air to be roughly level with the thirty-foot Fire Demon’s head, yelling as he swung the tablet like a blunt-force weapon.

_WHACK!_

“ _ARGH_!” Spittle trailed as Shendu flew head-first, backwards from the blow like a mighty freighter train had rammed him. The dragon-demon crashed into the half-destroyed seating, causing a slight tremor to run through concrete into the earth, thin dust-clouds bursting around his large body. Thundering footsteps gave away the Mountain Demon’s approach behind Jackie, making him turn – storeys above his height, Po Kong’s red eyes were blazing in anger, as she raked a claw towards him. Jackie rolled sideways, Po Kong’s giant fingers burying themselves in the earth. He would’ve tried neutralising the giantess there and then, but Bai Tza’s hiss alerted him to the Water Demon shooting cobra-like up the mountain-base – it made Jackie somersault backwards. He landed ahead of the demoness several feet from Uncle, raised tablet’s barrier flashing to catch the firehose-like water jet a couple feet short of Jackie – as soon as the water ceased, Jackie leapt forward.

Bai Tza shifted sideways, letting Jackie shoot past her; red eyes blazing and tentacles writhing angrily as she shrieked to her brethren, “ _Rid him of that tablet_!”

Landing in a crouch, Jackie smirked over his shoulder as he said, “Let me help.” Before throwing the tablet frisbee-like in the direction he’d come from. Hissing, the mermaid-like demon scarpered – her toad-like brother who’d been behind her had no time to react before the cyan flash hit and threw him backwards. Jackie’s smirk vanished, ears picking up the noise of Po Kong’s claw tearing out of the earth, the building-sized demon grunting angrily as she lunged for him. Bai Tza was slithering fast along the earth, webbed hands firing twin water-jets. In the second Jackie leapt sideways, Po Kong’s body was off the ground mid-lunge, water-jets blasting into her face and making her yell in her deep voice – the Mountain Demon’s eyes were closed as she crashed and continued sliding forward with earthquake-force, colliding with her aquatic sister hard enough to reduce Bai to screaming water.

_PCHOW!_

Tso Lan grunted aloud, raised hand’s gravity-beam clashing with chi-green, though the offensive chi-spell still seemed to force the Moon Demon backward. Jackie grinned at the result of Uncle’s offensive, until suddenly, he was being crushed on all sides below the shoulders by an invisible force, arms tight to his sides as he was sharply lifted to the air.

“ _Uncle_!” Jackie yelled – not a second later, Uncle’s skinny arms were violently yanked skyward, breaking his chi-beam, a second before he hovered wrists-first from the ground, trapped leg tearing free. The moment Uncle had levitated to roughly the same level as Jackie and several metres across from him, glowing eyes materialised between them first, followed by the hulking reptilian body that held either Chan in a huge hand. Jackie’s brown eyes bulged as he gasped, Shendu’s shadow completely eclipsing him. Shendu’s jaws opened less than his huge arm’s length away from the human, flames licking around his teeth while yellow light shone from his eyes.

 _PCHOW_ – Tohru fired a chi-blast.

It hit Shendu’s cheek like a mighty slap, forcing his head to the side as flamethrower-like fire-breath and eyes’ heat-beams were released. The Fire Demon’s dinosaur-like feet thudded on earth as he staggered from the blow, facial orifices still glowing as he lost his grip on his captives. Uncle landed on his rear unceremoniously, while Jackie landed in a crouch, strands of his long hair flying about. The half-crouched Fire Demon’s muscularly-toned back faced the Chans for about a second-and-a-half, before he whirled with a yell and threw two handheld fireballs. Jackie was aware in the back of his skull of Tohru thundering forth behind him, the two chi-wizards raising their weapons, holding back the flaming torrent with a chi-barrier.

Somewhat winded, Xiao Fung ignored the sores and aches riddling his body as he crawled forward on the battered battleground that the stadium had become, the vertical spacetime crack ahead glowing a sickly-green with the elder chi-wizard’s good-magic spell. Well-aware of the humans behind him occupied by Shendu, the Wind Demon’s wide mouth was fixed in a thin scowl as he rose on his hindquarters, bringing his large, taloned hands together and chanting; either hand’s thumb and index finger joined at the tips in interlocking chain-hoops, remaining fingers interlaced.

“ _Ao-ao-niu-tie-lian-men-hu_ , _ao-ao-niu-tie-lian-men-hu_ , _ao-ao-niu-tie-lian-men-hu_ …” A glowing green magic-orb formed before Xiao Fung’s joined hands, and as soon as he finished chanting it fired forward in a beam. The spell mixed with the good-chi spell, the locked rift and wilted demonic appendages blazing brighter-green – until every trace of chi-magic vanished, the splintering rift’s and half-emerged demons’ former colours restored. Xiao’s voice was cold and serious as he shouted, “The Great Demon-spawn of the Wind invokes the mightiest of demon brethren. Aid us in destroying those who would derail your liberation!”

Thunder crashed and yellow lightning forked violently. A gaping, shadowy maelstrom expanded outward in the bloodred clouds around the rift, fresh waves of dark-chi rolling that were potent enough to tickle Xiao Fung’s skin. Most demons poking through the rift’s splinters screeched in terror, some of the lesser demons such as the bone-snakes dissolved mid-scream into cloud-poofs. A few seconds of this passed, before a small tremor ran through the earth and through Xiao Fung’s knuckles and shoes – then gigantic, black-and-grey tentacles shot forth like striking serpents from a few rift-splinters.

A tentacle reared cobra-like near Jackie Chan and his elderly uncle, showing the curved spines that lined its underside where an earthly cephalopod would’ve had suckers – when the scrawny chi-wizard fired a chi-spell, the tentacle screeched indignantly, and Xiao Fung could’ve grinned in anticipation of the demon’s response. The tentacle formed a dark-chi orb at its tip and fired. The blast hit Uncle’s shoulder-bag, making the old chi-wizard and Jackie gasp – when the blue chi dispersed with a violent flash, the shoulder-bag’s underside was left blackened, and one second later it dumped its contents on the ground. Every chi-weapon was brown or blackened, and rapidly disintegrating. Standing near Xiao Fung, Shendu produced a pleased bestial growl in his throat, both demon brothers’ glowing eyes glinting with dark amusement – a particularly-large demon-tentacle slammed its underside to the earth between them, the black thing immediately melding with the ground beneath their feet. The tentacle’s blackness spread like Shadowkhan over every glass-blade and speck of earth, coated grass-blades rapidly wilting from the demon’s toxicity to nothing. The blackness rushed like spilled ink underneath the Chan men’s soles, and pure-black tendrils promptly rose to coil up their bodies, like a kraken’s tentacles seizing a ship – the humans had one second to grunt and struggle, before a dark-chi electrical current shocked them both. The last-surviving good-chi weapons in the restrained men’s hands withered and disintegrated into grey vapour.

Across the field, the sumo chi-wizard was firing spells at the corruption spreading unhindered towards him – the moment after it had spread under his feet, he was levitated upward as a giant, crooked hand like a black tree rose below him. With a thunderclap-like sound, opposing wind-currents began rushing to the suspended sumo, making him spin and turn in them as he yelled, a white magic-current crackling on him – his form condensed and shrank, until he was a perfectly-curved sphere with white, grey and skin-peach colours and wide eyes, eternally turning. The sight no doubt made Shendu’s eyes glow slightly brighter in delight, and Xiao Fung almost wondered if his brother got more pleasure from this than he did; it certainly elicited a delighted, growling purr from the dragon-demon.

* * *

Jade sprinted across the parking lot, headed for the lot grove where she’d seen the tablet. The tall tree thankfully was the nearest – upon reaching it, she leapt short of a collision with the trunk, both arms grabbing branches, and she propelled herself into the leaves where she promptly began sifting around. After three seconds of searching in which Jade was aware of the sky’s demonic thunderclaps, a heavy wheelie desk fell out of the tree and violently crashed to earth without breaking. Jade looked down over her shoulder with a smirk, before leaping from the tree.

“Your wits are getting dull, Hsi Wu,” she murmured with a smirk, approaching the undamaged desk, and lifted it into a standing position, the tablet stuck to the desk’s top making her absurdly think of royal jewels on display – her free arm was raised, body ready to start sprinting, when a groan made Jade freeze and turn her head. At the adjacent parking lot grove, the figure was completely silhouetted, few details apparent right away except that he looked human and had combed hair – as he slowly all but stumbled forward, the shadows began to peel upward on him, red-tinged daylight revealing a plain blue suit. As he fully stepped forth, the light unveiled a broad-nosed Asian face, a hand rubbing the head’s side, before cocoa-brown eyes opened.

It was as if the world had stopped spinning, as Jade stared wide-eyed, her formerly-racing brain now screeching and threatening to crash – she barely heard her voice when she spoke. “ _Dad_?!”

The man’s eyes found Jade’s and he smiled sadly. “ _Jade_.” He took two steps forward, and Jade immediately pushed the wheelie-and-tablet behind her back, body working almost on automatic – that prompted him to stop.

“No…” She briefly shook her head, closing her eyes as her face’s muscles refused to scowl just yet. “You’re not him. My dad died three years ago.”

“You know me, Jade – please listen,” the man seven feet in front of her said with a calm urgency, raising his palms in a placating gesture – he moved, but halted again when Jade raised her chi-weapon.

“Not. Another step.” She warned quietly, one brown eye and half her mouth visible while her hand and chi-shell concealed half her face.

“You are so confused – I _was_ dead, Jade,” Jade’s father or whatever-looked-like-him explained, his gestures and soothing tone reminding Jade of the times her dad had tried soothing her mother or diffusing an argument among apartment neighbours. “I was in the hospital after the bus hit my car. And you were there, holding my hand.” Jade tried to stop her eyebrows turning sad, though her facial muscles shivered with feeble loyalty. “I was on the other side…” he murmured mysteriously. “Then I appeared here, today. Because _he_ said he can bring me back.”

“ _Who_?” Jade asked calmly.

“The angel.”

Jade’s eyes bulged, a storm of anger threatening to explode inside her. “Wha- Lucifer?!”

“Yes, him,” her dad said calmly, like he wasn’t talking about the in-the-flesh Devil; then his irises flashed bright-red.

Jade’s face darkened, and her voice sounded quiet. “You’re not-!”

“He’s keeping me here in this image, but that doesn’t mean I’m not me,” he said quickly, eyes reverting to brown – Jade almost wished her dad had confirmed her outburst, so she could give in to fury. “He hasn’t completely brought me back to life completely – but if you and Cousin Jackie help him, he can.”

After a brief pause, Jade lowered her chi-shell an inch. “How?”

“He is not what you must think he is,” her father said. “He is only helping those _demons_ because he needs to acquire their magical knowledge to return home. And he can use that magic to bring me back.”

“What about those agents he hurt?” Jade asked.

“Them as well.”

“And all I have to do is get rid of this tablet and welcome the new demon-world order with open arms?” Jade spat.

“I will do more to prove it’s me,” her dad said. “Your favourite childhood movie was _Tail of the Dragon_. When you were three, your mother and I took you to Moose World for the first time – you came home with a moose hat. You’ve hated perch ever since your mother made you eat it when you were four. When you were accepted into college, I told you I had never been more proud of you.” The grip Jade’s will held on her facial muscles grew slippery and her eyes threatening to sting. Her dad went on, frowning like he was sincere as he said, “Lucifer isn’t what _I_ would expect an angel to be like either. But he is an angel. He can put a stop to _all_ those demons, and take what he needs from their ancient lost archives. Then he can bring me and the others back.” Jade’s body was petrified, moisture reaching her eyes’ rims. Her dad suddenly grunted and doubled over like he were hurt, and his body started glowing with white light, Lucifer-red eyes locking with hers, and fading back to brown as the light faded. “Please, Jade. He can’t keep me here for long.” If Jade could’ve seen her face, she would’ve deemed the facial expression sad and murderous at the same time. Slowly, shakily, the chi-weapon separating her and her father like a spear, fell.

Jade turned her head, not wanting to meet her father’s gaze as she started letting the words flow. “When I got into college, I was gonna go on staying with Jackie and Uncle every summer break… But when Mum called me about the car accident two days before summer started, I went straight to Hong Kong. Jackie, Uncle and Tohru came too. But when the doctors said you only had two weeks to live, I just...” The words briefly caught in her throat, and she was aware of her father looking pitifully at her. “-ended up being at the hospital every day.” Jade scoffed – at least she thought she scoffed, but it felt and sounded more like a weak cough. When she opened her eyes, tears leaked onto her face. “I tried making a healing potion, but Uncle and Tohru said it wouldn’t work on you. And after you died, Mum just kinda _wasted away_. And then I…” She paused again, a hard lump in her throat. “I just drowned myself in college work. I couldn’t stop myself thinking, if I’d been with you and Mum more instead of wanting adventures…” Suddenly she sniffled a ragged intake of air, sounding as pathetic as she felt.

A pause passed before her father spoke as slowly and steadily as a pond’s ripple in a breeze. “Jade. _Be here for me_ _now_.”

Jade sniffled twice in one second uncontrollably, and she promptly had to raise her hand to her face to get it under control for a few seconds, before she spoke again; “Okay… Okay.” Her dad was smiling kindly.

 _Sniff._ ” _NOT_!” she screamed, lifting and swinging the wheelie-desk two-handed. The desk’s side smacked her dad’s cheekbone violently but there was no cyan flash, his head snapping sideways. Jade’s still-wet eyes were wide in the pause that followed. Slowly, her dad turned his head back with a groan, flexing his jaw before he ever met her gaze.

“Well, like they say… can’t blame a guy for trying.” The voice and the accent were unchanged, but the tone and body language didn’t match her dad’s, who smirked and winked at her. Jade’s eyebrows lowered and her mouth closed, burning eyes’ tear production halted. Lucifer-in-her-dad’s-form turned his head to the desk on the tarmac, smirking condescendingly. “Guess you brought a fake arrow to real Cowboys-and-Indians. _Or is it the other way round_?”

“How did you know about my dad?” Jade asked, voice sounding flat to her.

“I, uh, might’ve rifled through your drawers-” Lucifer pointed a finger at his temple, speaking nonchalantly. “-when you and me got Dai Gui and Tchang Zu outta the box.” When he took a step towards her, Jade backed away in sync. “What’s the matter, beautiful?” Lucifer-as-her-dad purred, her dad’s stolen smile turning mischievous. “Don’t you wanna play with Daddy?”

Jade sprinted sideways, barely managing to right and drag the wheelie desk with her. Lucifer started glowing, and unleashed a light-wave with his arm. The moment it rolled over Jade, she and the wheelie were thrown in the air, every cell in her body buzzing unpleasantly not unlike when Lucifer had grabbed her in Section 13. After a second, she painfully hit the tarmac chest-first, the wheelie crashing ahead – amazingly, it remained unscathed as though by magic – while several cars’ alarms blared after the blast. Jade groaned painfully, forcing herself to look back, at which point panic threatened to well. The beige-pants legs were striding slowly forward, like every horror movie where the killer taunts and stalks their victim – the moving limbs expanded with closing proximity as Jade willed her limbs to move, effort making knives pierce her raw nerves.

Lucifer smiled as he approached. Jade was getting on her hands and knees, unintentionally giving him a view. He rolled his shoulders and white light started pouring from him, wings reappearing and unfurling. The glow stayed concentrated on Lucifer, making every discernible human feature fade until he was a white human outline with wings – at which point, the light-silhouette gave off a flash before the light and wings began fading; to reveal the features and grey-and-denim clothes of the fallen archangel’s preferred form. Jade stumbled against a blaring car’s bonnet regaining her footing. Smirking at the sight, Lucifer began walking forward. His beeline to the weakened woman was a casual, even-paced stride-

 _PCHW-HSSZZ!_ He staggered from the light-beam suddenly piercing his shoulder, before the thing vanished as abruptly as it had hit – leaving a sizzling, glowing red-hot hole burned through Lucifer’s human form. Jade gasped. The burn-hole’s edges turned angelic-white as the damage began regenerating, Lucifer turning his puzzled blue gaze off it to see what-

Captain Black and two agents fired their bazooka-launchers. Lucifer gave an unimpressed look, a split-second before fire and smoke burst and engulfed him – the smoke-plume remained thick where it had erupted for two seconds, before the white glow on Lucifer’s hand pierced it, and with a hand-wave he parted the smoke to reveal himself undamaged. He could’ve deflected those projectiles, but he’d wanted the humans to see how utterly pointless this was. Apparently, Section 13 weren’t fast learners, as a kneeling agent almost-immediately fired his mechanical crossbow-weapon. Lucifer’s breath hitched at the electrical arrow’s impact below his shoulder, crackling audible, before he sighed amid the noise – that actually felt kinda good, he thought as he lazily grasped the arrow to pull it out. He didn’t see the particularly-large bazooka fire downwards. When the projectile exploded at Lucifer’s feet, he couldn’t say he particularly cared as he feel through the tarmac.

Captain Black and his two nearest agents lowered their bazooka-launchers. Where Lucifer had been, they was a six-foot hole from the tarmac collapsing underground, smoke billowing. Black was doubtful this would take Lucifer down after everything they’d thrown, and didn’t smile in the slightest. After several seconds of moderate quiet barring the car alarms, a scraping sound made the captain alert – a second scraping noise for a second, coming from beyond the smoking hole’s lip, then another. Black’s green eyes were unblinking in the quiet lull.

 _BOOM!_ The parking lot exploded with a twelve-foot ball of white light. An invisible shockwave throwing every agent off their feet. Black hit his back hard, some of his men landing on their fronts around him, but he quickly shrugging off the pain to look into the white light’s source.

As the supernatural light and whine receded, Black saw its human-looking source striding casually forward. “Ah, really, guys…” Lucifer stopped to look down his nose at Black in a way that reminded him of his uncle. “Trying to feed me to C.H.U.D.?”

Captain Black said nothing – the mechanical whirring above Black’s bald head made Lucifer’s gaze track upward, seeing the laser-cannon tank stationed beyond the captain, before its beam fired. It blasted at Lucifer’s head, making him stagger. The beam cut.

When Lucifer turned his head back, his audience saw there was only two-thirds of a head with one eye left, semicircular edge marking where the rest had been burned away – he said after a pause, “Cute.” Almost-immediately re-straightening himself, Lucifer cricked his neck while the head-cavity’s burned edges glowed. Captain Black and his men glared, the downed captain’s face deathly-stern. With a flash, the glow faded, leaving Lucifer’s head restored; and the evil angel smiled as he said, “What have we learned today?” He rolled his shoulders, light and wings reappearing, and he smiled quite-affably as he raised his earthward-facing palms.

“Disperse!” Captain Black yelled, scrambling with his men. Lucifer slammed his glowing hands to the tarmac. Black had no chance to turn before the shockwave hit his back, throwing him and several other near agents forward. A distance away, the laser-tank crashed back to earth from being thrown to the air, and exploded, the fireball consuming several square metres.

When the blast was over, Lucifer was the only figure in the parking lot still standing, everyone else being scattered about like discarded marionettes.

Smiling broadly, Lucifer clapped his hands together, and spun on his heel, seeking a no-doubt unconscious woman as he said, “Now, where we-?”

The car where she’d been, though overturned, was still there but there was no trace of Jade Chan – or the wheelie desk and tablet she’d been trying to haul. Lucifer mentally reviewed the agents’ attack, putting two and two together – then he turned his head to the curving stadium that lay some dozens of metres across the parking lot, and for a moment he thought he glimpsed a tiny, speck-like silhouette retreating into the main entrance. Thunder crashed and yellow lightning flashed, illuminating Lucifer’s humourless face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who detects the Transformers Prime reference, you deserve a cookie. :)


	6. The Eighth Inning Butt-Whoop

Neither Dai Gui nor Tchang Zu were aware of what was happening in San Francisco, beyond Tchang Zu’s blue skin being tickled by a faint wave of dark-chi carried on the wind. Dai Gui was advancing through a Portuguese town not far from the Iberian coastline, iron-grey horns tearing and kicking up dirt and cobblestones while pedestrians fled the Earth Demon’s underground passage. Tchang Zu was stomping through a Los Angeles road, people fleeing and screaming ahead of him – when a police car pulled up in the crossroads-intersection ahead, the Thunder Demon threw a torrent of lightning which instantly destroyed the wailing machine. Immediately after Tchang Zu passed the crossroads-junction, both demon-sorcerers on their respective continents were simultaneously surprised, to find a small wall of humans clad in Section 13’s armour blocking their paths – it prompted Dai Gui to rise obelisk-like out of the ground.

In unison, both bands of agents chanted, holding green-glowing chi-ingredients. “ _Yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ , _yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ …”

The demon brothers’ red eyes widened. A second before either group’s chi-ingredients unleashed a green blast. Dai Gui and Tchang Zu each cried out, good-magic blazing over them as the spells did their work.

* * *

Sprinting from the concrete tunnel, Jade all but skidded to a halt at the sight on the baseball field. Several monstrosities were poking through the spacetime-cracks including monstrous tentacles, and demon-sorcerers were clustered around at least two sources of attention. Po Kong and Hsi Wu were menacing a floating orb that looked disturbingly like Tohru. Nearer the dimension-fracture, Jade’s restrained and wriggling uncles were being menaced by Shendu, Bai Tza and Xiao Fung – she also took note of Drago’s tattered membranous cage nearby.

“As modern-day humans say, _Jackie Chan_ ,” Shendu murmured in a quiet and sickly-secretive tone, draconic jaws snapping with his speech, before he raised a clawed finger with a hot-glowing tip; “welcome to _hell_ …” Jade looked from one demon-hotspot to another, racking her brain. Nobody would be casting chi-spells in their current state, but if she could occupy the demons ( _All of them?!_ ), perhaps she could buy Jackie and Uncle time to slip their demon-bindings. Besides, as a growling Shendu moved his glowing claw-tip closer, it seemed her uncles needed help now or never.

“ _Hey, uglies_!” Three demon-sorcerers turned their heads, glowing eyes widening in sync with Uncle and Jackie’s. Jade had the upright tablet-desk proudly displayed by her side, one elbow resting atop the magic stone, devilish smirk on her face. “Recognise _this_?” Shendu almost-immediately lowered his spine and breathed a fiery torrent. Jade ran sideways with the wheelie desk, a split-second before flames burned and spread over the non-black patch of ground.

“Stop her!” Shendu roared urgently, pointing a clawed finger. Webbed hands fired twin water-jets while Xiao Fung blew a gust. Wind and water smashed and shattered the arena’s concrete behind Jade, the continuous blasts racing to catch up with her, which prompted the woman to put more energy into her sprint.

When the wheelie table tripped, Jade’s heart leapt into her throat before its wheels rejoined earth – though it had lagged and was now being dragged behind her, making her grunt; “Danged… gluing-spell!” Had she turned her head, she would’ve seen Hsi Wu flying fast towards her, scowling with red eyes blazing bright – closing the distance, he outstretched his clawed arms and hissed. His hands were closing the last metre between him and Jade, when the woman sharply whipped around, sweeping her leg in a hook-kick. Jade’s sole hit the noseless face, slowing Hsi Wu. She jumped and nestled her bent legs atop the fast-trundling desk, like she were a kid atop a speeding shopping cart again – a couple metres behind her, Hsi Wu shook off the blow and hissed angrily, a split-second before the water behind him caught his body and slammed him. Looking over one shoulder, Jade had to wince. As the wind and water-jet swept on, a broken-looking Sky Demon was left flattened into the web-cracked concrete.

Jackie and Uncle gasped in a mix of surprise and anxiety, mostly anxiety in Jackie’s case. Jade was circling near the warning track atop the wheelie, keeping ahead of the demons’ wind and water which had just crushed Hsi Wu – but despite her success, Jade’s uncles caught sight of tendril-tips rising like curious crocodiles from the pool of earth-coating demon-blackness that ended near Jade. Then a furious yell like the Earth itself were screaming made Uncle and Jackie craned their heads – behind them, Drago rose and with one flex of his near-pulsing muscles, shredded the membranous chi-spell; lightning flashed and thunder crashed behind the large demon, as if the demonic thunderclouds were hailing his freedom. Even Xiao Fung seemed wary enough that he halted his attack to look behind himself, reminding Jackie of Drago’s cataclysmic power.

“ _Ha-HAHAHAHA_!” Drago’s laughter boomed like the noise of a hurricane, monstrous face twisted with an open grin as furious winds rushed around the Chans and to the mutated demon, making Uncle cry out.

“ _Ai ya_!” At the same moment he made that sound, Shendu turned his head from his son and threw a fireball with his hands. Said fireball blasted the stadium’s concrete into soot and smoke in front of Jade. Making the woman gasp, before she tried to veer the wheelie desk to avoid it – at the same time she veered, the hissing Water Demon scrambled predator-like where she’d just been, twisting to relentlessly keep up the pursuit.

With a horrid sound, one of the black-and-grey demon-tentacles loomed near Uncle, like it meant to chew him to bloody bits with those teeth, though the restrained chi-wizard just glared at its tip.

“Does octopus-demon recognise the _Primordial Arts_ when it sees it?” Uncle asked – which prompted the tentacle to twist, pointing its curled tip in Jade’s direction like a dog’s nose. “Yes? Then tentacle-demon will release Uncle… or _UNCLE WILL USE ARTS TO BIND DEMON TO SPEND ETERNITY PANTS-SNIFFING_!” The tentacle squeaked a vile sound like something being squeezed of life, then turned its tip back outward for a moment – before it disintegrated. Its ink-like remains fell into the black earth, and the tendrils around Uncle almost-immediately began loosening. The same happening with Jackie. Though Uncle’s attention was drawn when Shendu came storming towards him, the thirty-foot dragon-demon growling and yelling furiously.

“ _AI YA_!” Uncle shrieked, stumbling backwards as the tendrils behind him fully retracted, the earth-blackness retracting under his feet – Uncle barely missed being crushed by Shendu’s torso-sized hand, which hit the corruption-free earth hard enough to send a tremor up Uncle’s fibulae. The Fire Demon turned his tattooed head – and didn’t see Jackie leaping above and behind his spike-crowned head in a flying kick.

_THUNK._

“ _Argh_!” Shendu hit the earth face-first, giant arms crashing around his head shortly afterwards. Across the stadium, as the gnarled hand’s fingertips fully receded, the spherical Tohru fell to earth; in the same second that the demon-blackness coating the ground began receded like a flash flood in reverse, leaving barren brown earth where it had touched. Uncle and Jackie, and a bewildered Drago turned their heads as the last of the inky demon rushed back to the dimensional fracture, condensing back into its gigantic tentacle form – which promptly began worming its fat body to get back inside the yellow-edged crack it had emerged from, the identical tentacles following its example as they hissed and squealed.

Xiao Fung’s glowing eyes were wide as he ran toad-like forward to stop near the rift, razor-toothed grin turned upside-down. “Do not listen to him!” But the tentacles’ dark tips were already withdrawing as the Wind Demon shouted, “ _Nooooo_!”

A reptilian-sounding growl stilled the air like a thundershock, making Jackie and Uncle crane their heads towards Drago – the hovering chimera-demon was baring his sharp teeth in an annihilating scowl, before he formed a car-sized fireball with one hand and threw it. Jackie yelped and grabbed Uncle by the waist like he were saving a terracotta warrior, sprinting away before the earth was bathed in flames. Growling through his teeth – which in turn made thunder crash nearby – Drago turned his blazing glare off his initial targets for now. A distance across the field, he saw Jade rushing halfway up one of the mountain-uplifts Po Kong had created earlier, the earth thundering rhythmically as said demoness approached with some of her smaller siblings. Jade was moving up the rough terrain with the wheelie desk like the heroine of _Kill Bill_ , headed for the uplift’s peak which gave way to destroyed seating and the stadium’s press box. Whatever the Chans were up to with those tablets, Drago didn’t care to find out, and he made an upward-swiping motion with a clawed, scaly arm. The mountain immediately rumbled around the surprised woman, as huge shafts began to tear upward among the ground around her from Drago’s Earth Demon power, making her rush onward faster. Jade zigzagged and halted once to avoid the shifting landscape that was increasingly forming an obstacle course, but Drago wasn’t in the mood to take amusement – she did good for a couple seconds, before a trembling shaft that missed the wheelie desk sharply rose beneath Jade, making her cry out as it shot her upwards. Jade remained splayed atop the shaft for less than three seconds, before Hsi Wu suddenly grabbed her off it like a bird of prey – then a giant hand harshly tore the woman from an outraged Wu’s grip, the Sky Demon’s toe-claws shredding Jade’s clothing at the shoulders; and the woman came face-to-face with a humming, lip-licking Po Kong.

Glaring, Jade opened her mouth and bit the green hand holding her. Crying out, the huge demoness threw the woman, or perhaps lost her grip mid-flail. Either way, Jade flew diagonally to the air, yelling, before the uplift-mountain’s sloping surface abruptly broke her fall, and she got moving almost-immediately. As she reunited with the wheelie-desk, the back of her head was facing the descending Tso Lan. To Drago’s mild pleasure, Jade never saw the indigo gravity-blast hit her, throwing her and the wheelie desk in differing direction with inverse-gravity. She reached the uplift’s peak, midsection directly atop it. She cried out slightly, her upper-torso hanging above a far drop which she was face-down to. Sadly for Drago, she was back on her feet faster than another timeline’s Jade ever was, sprinting along the cliff-edge – she stopped in time to avoid getting snatched by Hsi Wu again, jumping and delivering a hook-kick to the fast-flying imp-demon. Po Kong was grunting as she climbed the uplift, nightmarishly-huge bulk approaching the peak like a sunrise upon the horizon; but Jade was already at the fallen wheelie-desk, quickly getting it standing while Tso Lan threw another energy-blast…

“ _NO_!”

Drago’s cry was too late as the gravity-blast propelled Jade and her cargo ahead of the uplift. They crashed among the broken seats. With surprising fierceness, the woman forced her body to move, planting her hands underneath herself to push herself back up.

A thundershock-like growl resonated through the air around Drago, thunder and lightning clapping around his head as he seethed, his anger building like a young star inside him – and he gave that building fireball voice, unleashing an earth-vibrating bellow as he opened his flame-filled mouth, leaning his huge body as he flew forward. He would finish this like a pro where his father, aunts and uncles were _failing_!

Crouched among the seats with her chi-shell aimed, Jade fired volleys of green chi-bolts – Tso Lan swerved to avoid each green blast, until a lucky one caught him and sent him falling backwards. Not stopping with everything a haze of adrenaline, Jade shifted her aim and fired another bolt. It hit Po Kong square in the heavy-lidded eyes. The enormous Mountain Demon reared atop her sloping creation, undersized arms covering her face as she bellowed in pain and rage – the sound was matched by Drago’s furious roar as he flew ahead of Po Kong. Jade didn’t spare time for gasping, not letting the indescribable force that was pushing her every muscle relent now – she finished hauling the wheelie desk up a meagre two steps between seating areas, before re-straightening her shell-holding arm and chanting.

“ _Yumoguigwaifaidizao-yumoguigwaifaidizao-yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …” Until a green beam shot out. Head reared, Drago unleashed a bellyful of fire. Green lightning and orange flame clashed in mid-air, one pushing collectively against the other for a second-and-a-half before the lightning caved. The chi-lightning dome hurtled back towards Jade before the flames, hitting the wheelie-dragging woman. About a second later, the magic-protected desk and Jade Chan were crashing back to hard concrete – Jade was down less than two seconds before getting on her hands and knees, looking around. “Hey…”

She and the tablet were on white concrete; that of the very tip-top of the stadium’s wall above the nosebleed section, the press box’s caved-in side perhaps twenty metres horizontally away from them.

Jade was grinning as she shouted mockingly, “Thanks for the help, champ!”

Part of Jade inwardly regretted her taunt, at the livid look on Drago’s monstrous face. After two seconds, he roared a yell so terrible that it made Jade’s bones shiver and felt like it could shatter the heavens, a curtain of lightning-torrents besides the skyward rift flashing behind the hovering chimera-demon. Jade fired another chi-spell while she could. She repressed the urge to laugh when it went directly into Drago’s mouth, making him instantly shut it as his glowing eyes widened – after a split-second, the junior demon was coughing and heaving fireballs. Jade’s laughing urge tripled before she fired again. This time the chi-bolt squarely hit Drago’s left eye – the chimera-demon screamed at the top of his voice (which in turn made everything vibrate with a minor earthquake) as he reeled backwards in the air, eye covered with one hand; and Jade almost wondered what it was with her recent luck of hitting demons in the eye. But a furious bellow brought Jade’s attention back to the warehouse-sized Mountain Demon, charging up the mountain on all fours like some morbidly-oversized bull. Jade fired her chi-shell again. Po Kong raised a chubby forearm to block the first chi-spell, but wasn’t prepared for the second chi-shot, which hit below the square chin. The demoness promptly fell backwards from the peak of her uplift, rolling down the slope with noise like a crumbling cliff face.

* * *

Green light flashed and flickered from within the ravaged-looking stadium’s walls as Captain Black and the gathered agents – dressed in suits and SWAT gear alike – stood and watched (an act which was grinding on Black’s gears).

“How much time?” Captain Black asked darkly, turning to the short agent over his right shoulder; the small man promptly looked at his watch.

“Three minutes, sir.”

“… Come on, Jackie…”

An aerial jet’s viewfinder held the San Francisco Bay in its sight, the image of the John T. Knox Freeway and Red Rock Island tracking downwards with the aerial vehicle’s advance towards the bumpy hills, static distorting the pilot’s radio. “ _E.T.A. to bogey, two minutes_.”

Under the bloodred sky, Raptor jets were shooting in formation towards the city.

* * *

The Wind Demon’s glowing eyes were narrowed as he poured forth his hurricane-like breath ceaselessly. It kept Jackie and Uncle sitting with their backs to the dugout’s below-ground wall, rears crammed tight to the corners where wall met floor, the gust that blew over the edge ruffling both men’s long hair. The crash of Shendu falling back to earth behind Xiao Fung, chest hissing good-chi smoke no doubt from the woman, made the toad-demon turn his red gaze.

When the wind battering the dugout for now ceased, Uncle said; “We cannot wait any longer! Jade must be ready, and we must prepare now!” At the mention of Jade, Jackie’s bewildered face hardened and he nodded. Not two seconds later, Jackie was sprinting from the dugout, holding Uncle bridal-style, as Xiao Fung’s gaze returned to them. The demon began sucking air in. Jackie was three feet from the shield-generating tablet when the wind started pulling him, neutralising his momentum. Jackie’s boots were still moving fast, tips digging shallow gouges in the earth, but Xiao Fung’s vacuum-like inhalation stopped them from moving Jackie any further, whilst easing off his legs in the slightest would lead to his and Uncle’s doom. Taking a gamble, Jackie leapt with as much speed as he could; for a split-second he and Uncle were suspended between their destination and the wind vacuum, before Uncle’s skinny arm snatched the tablet, and its cyan barrier instantly cut the wind off from them. The barrier faded as Jackie lowered Uncle onto his feet, the old man handing Jackie the tablet – then the younger man yelped and held it two-handed, a split-second before heat-beams met the cyan.

“ _Jackie_! We must be in the _exact_ centre of the stadium!” The old man hollered while striding away, as if his nephew _wasn’t_ currently blocking a heat-ray attack behind the chi-wizard’s back. Shendu was up and running again; the Fire Demon cut off the eye-beams and turned his draconic head. Towards the stadium wall which Jade was a tiny figure atop, dragging her cargo slowly towards the half-destroyed press box and firing chi-spells to keep demon-sorcerers back.

“Uncle! Hurry!” The sight made Jackie yell urgently, before scampering with the tablet from his former spot.

“No, _after_ the Earth Demon and Thunder Demon arrive!” the old man shrieked back as he sat cross-legged in the middle of the field, seeming unbothered by the spacetime-rift’s flailing monstrous appendages mere metres away. Holding up a handbag mirror, Uncle immediately began drawing on his forehead with a crayon.

* * *

Jade was literally outside the press box’s viewing space, firing two chi-bolts that forced Hsi Wu to retreat in the air with a hiss – she didn’t waste any time before hauling the tablet-toting desk over the viewing screen’s concrete lip, vaulting inside after it.

“You’re almost home free,” she all but panted breathlessly to the thing – before a sudden increase in wind blew her hair about and made her turn her head, smile fading.

She registered the colourlessness in the first lightning-flash, before a second lightning-strike left a human-looking figure standing two feet from her; hands on his jeans belt’s front in a cowboy-like manner. “You got a receipt for that, little lady?”

In response to Lucifer’s exaggerated Eastwood voice, Jade glared heatedly, growling through her teeth; and she quietly lifted the tablet-desk upright behind herself as she spoke. “Sorry, the cashier said no receipts.”

Lucifer’s smile broadened coldly – then with a roll of his shoulders, his wings reappeared as he flooded the formerly-gloomy box with white light, high-pitched ringing returning, light-rays bending and undulating.

Outside, light shone brightly from every crack and opening in the press box, a moment before it suddenly exploded in a shower of rocks and rubble, leaving two figures standing among its ruins. As unsettlingly fresh as the memory of Lucifer’s light-tendrils touching her was, Jade shoved it down and glared, raising her fists as she entered a combative stance. Lucifer smirked almost-eagerly while thunder crashed somewhere.

“It’s okay, you can go back to killing them!” Lucifer abruptly turned his head and shouted into the stadium, reminding Jade of a school coach assuring kids that the sudden noise in the storage cupboard was nothing. Shendu had been looking up at them, but now turned his menacing gaze and threw a fireball. The cyan barrier flashed to block it from hitting Jackie, who was leaping and pouncing around a sitting Uncle to keep Xiao Fung and Po Kong back. “Whaddya say, Jade?” Lucifer murmured, his voice bringing Jade’s brown eyes back onto him. “You wanna give me that big rock and we’ll put this whole thing behind us, or… is this gonna go like _Inglorious Basterds_?”

“I hate to say it, feathers, but, you’re just not my type,” Jade murmured darkly, not dropping her combative stance in the slightest, muscles at the ready. Lucifer looked her over from head to toe, an expression on his face that reminded Jade of a poison-honey disappointed schoolteacher.

“Really, Jade, fists against, well…

“… _me_?” Lucifer gestured at his chest, eyebrows raised. “Come on, we’ve watched that rerun.”

“Like I always said in my head, if you can’t beat them, kick them in the gut,” Jade said, smirking darkly.

“Hm.” Eyebrows arched, Lucifer nodded his head – then he smirked as his blue eyes met hers again. “I like that.” Jade swung her leg in a flying hook kick. But Lucifer caught Jade’s ankle a foot from his face, then pushed her sideways with his free hand. The blow sent Jade flying like she were as light as glass – she flew clear from above the stadium’s nosebleed section, and was airborne and screaming for three seconds before her body crashed and started tumbling over dislodged seats, back down the way she’d come. Jade noted the way chairs started rustling, then stopped to indicate they were falling into the crevasse – she latched out an arm in the same moment her body went over the edge, fingers barely catching the bent piece of rebar before she could plummet, holding her dangling above the darkness between the seats and the uplift.

“Hurry, Uncle…”

Lucifer turned his cool head back to Jade’s belongings. The tablet stuck atop the wheelie desk, the biggest symbol on the tablet’s face of colour-changing paint being outward-radiating circles. Slowly, Lucifer extended a hand towards the object, waiting to see if he’d be deflected like he was with the other tablet – but his hand kept getting closer, until his fingers were curling atop the stone’s curved edge.

“Well…”

Lucifer grabbed the desk two-handed, and began hauling it off the floor as he moved forwards, like it only weighed half as much as it did. “…we won’t be needing _you_.” He was striding to the space where the press box’s back wall had once been, where now there were no physical barriers between him and the air above the parking lot.

* * *

Half the world away, Dai Gui was roaring furiously – about the only thing the horned demon could do in the shroud of good-magic that the crouched and aiming agents were holding on him.

“So, uh… did that Mister Chan mention how long we have to do this?” one of the frontline agents asked his comrade uncertainly, both their arms vibrating powerfully from the magic of their petrified-animal chi-ingredients. As if on cue to answer the agent’s question, the chi-streams stopped and the magic current flashed violently; Dai Gui roared as he was lifted into the air, before in a flash of white, the demon and the magic on him vanished.

A similar phenomenon was occurring in the L.A. crossroads where Tchang Zu was being restrained by magic.

* * *

Twin flashes of white erupted, like something huge had caught the sun on a non-hellish day, and left Dai Gui and Tchang Zu standing in the dimly-lit baseball field, looking around in bewilderment – the Thunder Demon spotted Shendu, Tso Lan and Drago across the half-destroyed field, all of them firing three elemental attacks in unison against a cyan energy-barrier. Shendu noticed the newly-arrived demons first, turning his head, red eyes widening.

“Uncle?” Jackie shouted back over his shoulder expectantly – he didn’t turn his head far enough to see the old man, only hearing his voice shout back.

“ _Hold your horses_!”

Drago cut off his fire-breath and turned his monstrous head. Jackie’s gaze followed Drago’s, to near Po Kong’s artificial uplift-mountain – where the upper-half of Jade’s body became visible, crawling up the seats beyond the mountain. Drago growled a reptilian sound and grinned, then flew ahead.

“ _JADE_!” Jackie yelled at the top of his lungs, watching in horror from behind the protective barrier as the thirty-foot monstrosity flew forward, looking like a dark underworld-deity risen to bring the apocalypse.

No-one in the stadium knew that while this was going on, a fighter jet’s viewfinder was registering an aerial image of Angel Island from the north as it passed over.

Hsi Wu hissed, swerving very-sharply below the bloodred sky. Alerted by his noise, Jackie backtracked and curved slightly, enough that the cyan barrier extended so Hsi Wu bounced painfully off it. Not a second later, static sharply hissed from behind Jackie, and he barely suppressed his startlement before Uncle leapt out from behind Jackie’s back – except the skinny old man was completely topless, symbols painted in red on his hairless-chested body. Uncle lowered the hissing radio to the earth, and Jackie got a brief better look at his paint-symbols – a series of outward-radiating rings and oval lines on his belly, an orb surrounded by outward-radiating symbols on his upper-chest, flame- and orb-like shapes on his arms threaded by necklace-like bead-shapes – as the old man stretched one arm diagonally above his head (a sideways eye or double-tipped flame-like shape on his forehead) while pointing the other arm in front of his chest in the opposite direction like 7:50 clock-hands. Against the radio’s background static, Uncle promptly reversed the pose, then joined his arms elbow-to-elbow in an S-shape like an inverted Egyptian hieroglyph-pose, then he kicked out either leg separately in some kind of magic chicken-dance.

“ _NO_!” Shendu, Xiao Fung, Tchang Zu and Tso Lan all screamed in unison.

Arms raised in twin L-shapes with the forearms facing outward, Uncle closed his eyes and produced a dead, tuneless Tuvat throat-sound. Jackie had no idea that at that very moment, Lucifer’s hand was grasping one of the other four tablets’ tops, muscles tensed.

Uncle waved his hand over and away from his mouth rapidly, like he were combining the tuneless throat-singing with a Native American hoot stereotype.

* * *

The tablet flashed cyan. Lucifer hissed, sharply withdrawing his hand as his flesh sizzled, irises involuntarily glowing. That had stung _badly_ , repelling him like matching magnet-poles! The tablet was now blazing with cyan energy as he stared – then, a transparent cyan membrane suddenly spread with a moving car’s speed outward from the tablet; left, right and up. Lucifer craned his head, seeing the same energy-membrane spreading below the bloodred sky, blotting the hellish colour. Jade also looked around from among the seats. From all four compass-points around the stadium, identical energy-membranes were curving, and merging together when their edges met each-other; until after a few seconds a transparent dome of cyan had formed over the half-destroyed stadium, encasing everything inside its walls. Demonic thunder and lightning flashed as if in protest, before the dome’s transparent walls began closing inward like a hi-tech printer’s laser moving.

Forehead-lines prominent and brows furrowed, Lucifer tentatively moved a hand towards the forward-crawling cyan wall in front of him – the sting returned. Looking around as he was forced to step backwards, Lucifer decided straight away that he didn’t like this one bit – being an archangel, there were only a number of things that could outright block and force back his being in his universe, and he’d thought he was immune to everything in this universe before he’d encountered those tablets. He placed both palms against the moving transparent barrier, making it hiss and crackle brightly where he touched it, but he refused to relent – teeth bared, irises flashing red and body beginning to shine as his essence was burned.

In the stadium, Shendu cut off his eyes’ and maw’s fiery assaults to crane his head, staring in glowing-eyed horror at the shrinking, transparent forcefield-dome that was snaking inward over the seating areas. Jackie, still holding the tablet up protectively, also craned his head in awe, briefly noting that the only breach on the shrinking dome appeared to be an inches-wide hole above his head where the dimension-rift reached the sky; before a shrill voice drew his attention.

“ _Jackie_!”

Uncle shrieked irritably; “ _It is time to go_!” Wordlessly, Jackie scooped Uncle up in his arms, keeping a one-handed grip on the tablet, and bolted so fast his neck-length hair billowed behind him. “ _No_! _LEAVE THE TABLET_!”

“Wha-!”

“ _DO NOT ARGUE_!” Spurred by Uncle’s urgent shortness, Jackie released the tablet with a groan, already five feet ahead of it before it touched the ground. Not a second later, Shendu’s heat-beams were furiously blasting the barren ground behind Jackie, making the archaeologist cry out as he jumped to save his ankles from incineration.

Lucifer was aware the bubble was shrinking with increasing speed, grunting in pain as it continued burning his glowing palms. Concrete steps cracked and broke as the archangel’s boots dug through them, his legs passing a row of seats every second. Suddenly, Lucifer exploded with white light as he reverted to his natural form, or as close as he could get in this alternate universe. The demon-sorcerers shielded their eyes against the oncoming light. The light filled the entirely of the shrinking energy-bubble, its whiteness overwhelming the cyan tinge as Lucifer poured all his power against the confines – after a few seconds, the bubble flashed with lightning, and Lucifer’s light-form rapidly disappeared. The light re-formed and withdrew back into Lucifer’s human form, pinned like a bug sixty feet above the stadium for a second, before he was blasted backwards from the crackling energy-field. He hit the ground near Shendu, Xiao Fung, Tchang Zu and Dai Gui hard enough to make the earth audibly cave under him.

Overhead, a blazing-eyed Drago inhaled and let loose a torrent of flame, but the fire just vanished on contact with the shrinking bubble. Roaring in rage, Drago flew forward on his wings. Throwing his body against the forcefield, the chimera-demon screamed as it electrocuted him as it had Lucifer, before he was thrown back.

Twin heat-beams were firing and barely missing Jackie left and right as he sprinted towards the baseball field’s edge – the bubble’s walls, shrinking past the warning track, thankfully passed right over him and Uncle without resistance, before he put the old man down on his feet. Shendu’s eye-beams were now blasting uselessly against the cyan bubble, which wouldn’t let them get through to incinerate the Chan men – twin torrents of fire from Shendu’s hands produced the same result.

“Where is Jade?” Jackie murmured, looking around in sudden worry.

“Speak of the devil.”

At the sound of her voice, Jackie saw the dishevelled woman all but jumping and somersaulting down the nearby seats towards the ground. “ _Figuratively_.” She was smiling despite her serious eyebrows, then frowned as she looked into the stadium.

“Jade, do you still have your chi-weapon?” Uncle asked.

“Right here-” Jade began presenting a snail shell, then stopped, eyebrows shooting up. “What’s with the tattoos?”

“Not important!” the topless old man said dismissively, before the sounds of demons’ cries and shrieks drew Uncle and Jackie’s gazes. The magic-bubble was now only forty feet in diameter and still shrinking, at the foot of the vertical dimension-crack. The nine demons and one evil angel went from being clustered together to _disappearing_ as the bubble shrank on them, the top of Po Kong’s bun vanishing beyond the bubble’s shrinking border, followed by the Mountain Demon’s wide red eyes and the top of her head. Tso Lan’s cry, Tchang Zu’s roar and Bai Tza’s shriek were cut off one-by-one as the shrinking bubble disappeared their bodies the same way – then Lucifer, teeth grit in some distress, started disappearing too, leaving only a bit of Xiao Fung’s body and leaving Shendu desperately hunching and craning his head.

“ _This is not over_! _CHAAAAA_ -!” Shendu’s open jaws were all that remained as he screamed the last word, before he was cut off as the bubble shrank smaller than that and then into nothing, disappearing above the dropped barrier-tablet with a small pop of cyan energy.

Jackie breathed in and out heavily, wind brushing at his long hair as he watched on. Jade was watching with him, when her eyes widened and she turned her head to her uncles.

“The military are coming to wipe this place out!” she yelled at her uncles.

Jackie gasped and Uncle’s jaw fell in unison.

“Time to go!” One second after Jackie had spoken, Uncle forehead-slapped him before his sprint could start.

“No! _After_ the breach has been sealed!” The old man dragged Jackie by the wrist like he were still a child. As if in answer to the chi-wizard’s reminder, the ravaged earth trembled as tendrils and claws flailed and screeched at the spider-network of yellow cracks in reality.

“Uncle-!”

“Do not argue!” Uncle chided lightly as he marched past Jade with purpose – the woman turned her head, and didn’t need prompting to sprint towards the thing Uncle was heading for. Tohru was still a compressed sphere from whatever the inky-demon had done to him, wriggling like a hamster’s ball on the ground and making muffled noises – as the Chans approached, Uncle removed an onion from his pants and held it up by his face, before gesturing for Jade’s chi-shell; he shed an onion-tear on her chi-shell followed by a glob of his saliva, and then he fired a chi-magic bolt on Tohru which restored him to normal in a flash.

“We must neutralise the spacetime fracture created by Lucifer,” Tohru said urgently as he rose, the out-of-it look on his bespectacled face rapidly fading.

“Fabric of reality here is already paper-thin!” Uncle said, both hands raised.

“Maybe we do not need to seal the fracture, only isolate it,” Tohru murmured quickly but knowingly, as if he knew of their immediate countdown to doom. Uncle just nodded his head, before turning with Tohru, raising the chi-shell two-handed and firing a green beam alongside Tohru’s chi-squid.

“ _Yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ , _yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ , _yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ …” The chi-wizards chanted in unison as twin streams of green magic travelled halfway across the baseball field to blaze on the yellow fracture’s foot. Monstrous demons half-emerging from the rift’s splinters – Venus flytrap-like jaws with spider-eyes, and what looked like a poison-purple dung beetle with clawed and single-jointed arms – screeched and hissed in fury inside the green shroud.

Elsewhere, the same jet viewfinder that had swept over the Bay was now sweeping over Union Square.

As the chi-wizards’ chanting continued, a column of green energy-vines rapidly twisted and weaved cylindrically around the yellow rift, crawling towards the bloodred sky – over the course of four seconds, the green column climbed beyond the edge of the demonic maelstrom, leaving not a speck of yellow dimension-fracture uncovered. There was a bright-green flash from the coated rift’s highest visible point, a magic ripple spreading outward along the broiling red clouds, then the green and the rift that was inside it completely vanished.

“Time to go!” Jade said quickly, as an urgent-feeling Jackie scooped Uncle up bridal-style without any protest, and the four Chans ran.

The bogey baseball stadium with its half-destroyed walls entered the jet viewfinder’s sights, although there was no otherworldly sky-crack visible. “ _Bogey is in sight, you are clear to bring the rain_.”

The jets each fired a missile from either wing. A small hail of the smoke-trailing, fire-spitting projectiles shot towards their target in a tsunami-like wave.

* * *

When the first missiles hit the wrecked stadium less than a second ahead of their comrades, a ball of fire and smoke exploded, a yellow strobe effect occurring inside the newborn black cloud as the other missiles completed the obliteration process. From where he’d relocated with the van, Captain Black and the other agents around him held up their arms to shield their faces against the sudden blasts of wind, smoke and some rubble flying past – after several seconds, the thundering and explosion of air died down, and Black almost-immediately looked. The baseball stadium was nothing more than a giant, flaming pile of rubble, in a crater that had once been half the parking lot, enormous smoke-clouds billowing from the rubble and crater to the red sky.

“Jackie…” Captain Black groaned, voice sour and despairing. The way the inky-thick smoke billowed vaguely reminded Black of a flag flying at a military funeral – an image which shimmered as a black silhouette started pressing through the outermost fumes, and vanished as four battered and sooty familiar faces emerged through the smoke, two of them leaning on the others for support as the long-haired man coughed. The agents, gear-clad and suit-clad, immediately began cheering, holding their weapons high, and Black had no desire to correct them or get them back in line.

Jackie coughed some more, then craned his soot-stained face and murmured with a smile, “A silent and very _holy_ night…” Specks of silver had begun piercing the bloodred clouds, which rapidly parted like a cloak being cut by a knife. Patches of moonlight lit the intact landscape surrounding the crater, rapidly expanding and merging into each-other, as the clouds continued dissipating and the sky faded from bloodred to moonlit night-blue. The Chans stood, facing the cheering line of agents across the parking lot a few seconds longer, Jade’s hands on her hips.

“What happened to the rift?” she felt she had to ask as she turned to Uncle and Tohru. “Did you _shift_ it?”

“Not quite,” Tohru murmured as they all turned and looked back over their shoulders – in the centre of the burning crater, Jade saw a vertical cylinder of green magic climbing upward from among the wreckage, flames licking at its base, before it vanished again as if it had never been there. “We couldn’t attempt closing the rift without consequences, so we instead encased it in a powerful barrier.

“If we replenish it with new spells every day for a month, it should remain strong enough to keep any demons from escaping – then it will become permanent.”

“Huh. Guess we’d better tell Captain Black to make sure this spot is in a no-fly zone. Looks like you’re on monthly driving-Uncle-to-spacetime-rifts duty, Jackie.”

“ _Ai ya_!” Jade was surprised verging on taken aback when Uncle got in her space as he shouted, “Uncle is not yo-yo! Captain Black must treat the barrier spell, with chi-wizards’ instructions!”

“I can’t help but feeling we’re forgetting something important…” Jackie murmured at the far end of the quadrio, holding his chin in thought – he didn’t notice the distant shriek of the tatter-limbed Lou Seal monster behind him, at the far road that was bordered by the bay, and he certainly didn’t see it leap like a SeaWorld dolphin over the edge to disappear with a faint splash.

Jade and Tohru’s eyes were saucer-wide as they gawked, before Jade spoke. “You know, after today, maybe we should get four hours rest before we try sorting that out…

“By the way,” Jade murmured, both chi-wizards receiving non-wizard eyes; “why did that tablet-magic thing work on Lucifer?” The topless older wizard’s answer was spoken airily.

“The _Primordial Arts_. Used before light and dark were separated, before the universe was formed. But it is _very_ dangerous – if tablets were not correctly painted, or if shield-tablet was moving while Primordial Arts bubble was shrinking, _all of the universe_ could have been destroyed! _Which is WHY YOU SHOULD ALWAYS LISTEN TO UNCLE_!” He literally yelled at the top of his voice as he turned on Jackie, jabbing an index finger on his nephew’s chest.

“Since the Primordial Arts came before the laws of our universe had formed, we believed they could, if used correctly, affect a being not of this universe.” Tohru’s face soured slightly as he added in a lamenting grumble: “They also in this instance drained the caster’s yin somewhat, so Uncle will be grouchy for a few days.”

“So where are angel-boy and the demon-sorcerers now?” Jade asked, no longer smiling, and Uncle turned back to her from berating Jackie.

“Banished to the Demon Nether-realm – _forever_.”

“Let’s go home,” Jackie said with a smile, perhaps trying to ease Uncle’s mood with positivity – he directly addressed Jade as he pointed behind his shoulder. “I am sorry your welcome back had to be interrupted, but we still have time to resume it before Uncle’s bedtime.”

“ _Tch_ , now that you mention it, Captain Black and his men could do with some party-time, after what they did for me at Section 13,” Jade murmured, smiling devilishly.

“ _Ai ya! Shop is not teenage dorm for frat-party_!” Uncle protested as they were all walking across the moonlit parking lot towards the agents. But Jade still had a niggling _feeling_ at the back of her consciousness that still wasn’t sated, concern that somewhere, they’d missed something important – it made her eyebrows lower and made her look behind her shoulder into the destroyed stadium momentarily, at the spot where the invisible dimension-fracture was contained, before she decided to put it on ice and worry about it later.

* * *

Bright white light suddenly shone in the orange-skied void, breaking up the monotony which only the dimension’s slowly-floating rocks could usually subvert. Lucifer’s white-winged human form, standing on a rock platform, disappeared as he reverted to his true form, becoming a vast, expanding ray of pure-white. His light washed over the demon-sorcerers, who were watching him some distance away, though he ignored them. He’d been able to slip out of the Netherworld freely when he’d gone to this alternate universe’s Earth, but now, whenever he tried, there was a firewall keeping him in here – it repelled him just like the tablet-created barrier had, and its sting had the same taste. It wasn’t just slipping back to Earth that was the problem for Lucifer – the barrier blocked him when he tried to exit to any other dimension, like a mother-load of (painful) ‘ _Access blocked_ ’ messages. And it didn’t make it any better that he wasn’t too fond of the idea of being stuck between the Netherworld and the Cage, after he’d been free for a time. Lucifer’s natural form coalesced, reconstituting into his Nick form – as the last light vanished back into him, red-iris eyes opening, Lucifer could smell the demon-sorcerers’ frustration even when they were half-a-mile away behind him, hear Bai Tza physically hiss out her frustration.

“Can he still leave this place?” Lucifer heard Po Kong murmur, booming voice slightly-quiet as though she didn’t want him to hear.

“If he could, would he be standing over there giving us a light show!?” Drago snapped.

“Which means we are once again here to stay,” Hsi Wu murmured, raspy voice sour.

“Maybe if a certain toad we know hadn’t turned his head when he had Chan pinned, we’d all still be on Earth!” Drago growled nastily at Xiao Fung, but kept his voice quiet, to which Tso Lan’s dark voice replied scathingly.

“You, Bai Tza and Po Kong had an opportunity to destroy the Chan woman – and your aunts didn’t have the advantage of possessing all the demon-powers.” They were _definitely_ wary of Lucifer – as far as they were concerned, if Lucifer couldn’t get them out of the Netherworld again, then their partnership now amounted to giving a comforting hug to a random passer-by and getting nothing back.

“There may be another way,” Hsi Wu said.

Interested, Lucifer immediately turned around, and he shouted across the distance with one hand by his mouth, “And what’s that?!”

They all turned their heads. With a spring of his ankles, Lucifer jumped from the rock platform he’d been standing on, the Netherworld’s twisting gravity drawing him to land on another rock nearly among the demon-sorcerers’ congregation – Lucifer clapped his hands together in front of his chest, looking straight at Hsi Wu. “Pray tell.” He was smiling, but his blue eyes had a hard look that said he wasn’t to be messed with.

“The rift which you came to our universe through works both ways,” Hsi Wu murmured, near-constant grin in place as he pointed sideways with a claw – to the large rock with the scratchings on its top lump, past the demon-sorcerers. “If you can’t do much from on the other side to reach your goals, then perhaps _we_ can rectify that – as you briefly rectified our imprisonment here.” Lucifer raised an eyebrow and smiled coldly. _Interesting_. He hadn’t mentioned he was outright imprisoned on his side of the rift, and he’d concealed the fact those _old friends_ he wanted to surprise were in his universe. He could just say no if he didn’t want the demon-sorcerers finding out how wholly limited he was, but Hsi Wu had played his cards quite well. The Cage was next to impenetrable in Lucifer’s universe, but the possibilities of an alternate universe were infinite. If the demon-sorcerers could actually break it open from the inside the same way Lucifer could slip between their universe’s dimensions…

“If I’m honest, I am in a pickle over there,” Lucifer said with a tone of admittance, spreading his arms as he held the demon-sorcerers’ attention. “Really isn’t half that different to what you’ve got here, in the stuck-in-a-box kind of way.” Nine pairs of red eyes were fixed on Lucifer, looking universally serious. “And hey, you guys want out, _I_ want out.” Lucifer was slowly pacing on the rock, gesturing at his audience and then at his chest as he spoke. “So if getting out of the Netherworld is a bust for all of us, then how about we see what happens when _my_ box has demon-sorcerers picking the lock?” He turned on the rock, holding every interested gaze. “Think about it, guys and gals. A _whole_ new universe…” He turned his head to his right, and leapt with a spring of his feet. He landed on a small rock that had been floating _very_ close to Shendu’s face, the rock’s course slowing with Lucifer’s landing.

“What about you, Goldie?” Lucifer said, gently slapping a hand on the large snout, above the whisker-fins – Shendu’s face, on its own as big as Lucifer’s current form, was still for a moment, then his glowing red eyes narrowed very-slightly. He shifted his head, making Lucifer release it, and looked at the others with a pleasant smirk on his lower-jaw. The demon-sorcerers all shared looks with each-other, one by one – Lucifer got the impression the same thought was processing in all their heads, like falling dominos.

“Why wait any longer?” Tchang Zu growled – all heads turned to the giant rock with the etched lump. Shendu raised his arm, clawed fingers curling. And the sigil scratched into the rock’s lump shone pure-white – with a violent flash, the light burst, a dark-mass re-forming a nine-foot-wide breach in the universe. Grinning, Hsi Wu was the first to move from his perch. Flying quickly into the hole, he rapidly disintegrated into grey powder which vanished down the dark trans-universal tunnel – then after a few seconds, Bai Tza swam through the air into it next to vanish, following by Tchang Zu jumping in. Lucifer’s rock was floating near Shendu as they watched the other demon-sorcerers glide or fly ahead. Po Kong was the next-to-last one through, the green giantess’s belly on the proverbial ground as she crawled in, huge girth making the tunnel entrance widen around her – after a few seconds, she too disintegrated and disappeared through the rift.

Lucifer turned his head to Shendu, smiling amicably as he gestured with an arm and said, “After you.” Shendu briefly glanced back at Lucifer with his red-glowing eyes, then his large muscles tensed, and he shot off his rock in an unnaturally-fast blur, producing an audible thump with his body’s weight when he landed at his destination. After a few seconds, Lucifer also watched Shendu’s form disintegrate and vanish inside the rift, which was now as large as Po Kong’s girth. Then Lucifer jumped. Leaping from one floating rock to another to reach the rift’s floating rock-island, the archangel’s human form lacking the size or abilities of the demon-sorcerers’ true forms. Upon reaching the island, Lucifer casually and slowly strode forward in front of the rift’s vast, grey-streaked blackness, putting one foot and the other over its threshold, and continuing to walk inside. As his body suddenly started glowing, Lucifer spread his arms and closed his eyes. Pure whiteness filled the rift’s inside, and gave a violent flash before disappearing like a burst lightbulb - not a second later, the rift’s edges shuddered, and it collapsed shut.


	7. A Whole New World

Lightning flashed through the wall’s grille-holes, regularly breaking up the blackness as Lucifer stepped forward in the Cage – his eyes looked around the familiar environment where he’d spent ages imprisoned, mouth a thin line in the box’s dim blue light. Stopping a few paces from the box’s corner, Lucifer regarded the shapes in front of him – several columns of wispy smoke had arrived in the Cage, clearly dark-blue in the gloom that came between lightning-flashes, each varying in height from four to seven feet, with glowing red orbs for eyes that looked about the box.

“Home sweet home,” Lucifer said none-too-enthusiastically, turning his head as he looked around the box – when one of the smoky figures turned its glowing eyes back onto him, Lucifer thought he glimpsed Tso Lan’s hair-bun through the wisps.

“How charming,” Xiao Fung’s sarcastic voice emanated from a short and broad smoke-figure, crawling along the box’s floor with slanted red eyes looking over the grille – Lucifer turned his head absent-mindedly as he briefly thought he heard Michael cry out in surprise, no doubt sensing the new visitors.

“So, guys,” Lucifer murmured, bringing his hands together in front of his chest as he drew the smoky demon-sorcerers’ attention. “Ready to pop us out of Pandora’s Box?”

The smoke-column that had a glimpse of Tso Lan’s hair turned on the spot, wisps trailing with its movements, red eyes craned as he hummed. “This box’s walls and materials are unlike any form of magic in our universe – though the mechanisms are far from escape-proof.” While Tso Lan talked, a small, squat- or crouched-looking smoke-column extended an appendage from its main mass by the box’s wall – the appendage slid easily through one of the grille’s decorative holes.

“I feel unknown magic doing nothing more than _slide along my skin_ ,” Bai Tza’s high, frosty-toned voice came from a smoke-column that was sticking an appendage through another wall’s grille-hole, extending it into the lightning-lit void.

Drago’s elated, growling sigh came from another smoke-column as it extended and pushed an appendage through another hole. “Like piercing naked skin.” Several pairs of red eyes shared a quick look amongst themselves.

Lucifer saw it clear as day, cold blue eyes shifting before he spoke with an undertone as dark as Hell’s void. “ _Guys_?” Bai Tza’s smoke form pressed against the grille suddenly, blue smoke parting and sliding through the holes until she was completely outside the Cage. More by the box’s walls did the same, while a few growling smoke-columns closer to the boxes’ centre glided fast to the walls. While the box’s interior rapidly emptied, Lucifer strode at an even pace towards the nearest wall, on his left, face unreadably cool – he rather-slowly put a hand on it above his head, staring out through the grille-holes as lightning flashed, eyes as cold as an early-spring morning before he smiled quite-coolly. “Great! So, uh…” He pivoted his body so his side was facing the grille, then he pointed skyward while looking out at the demon-sorcerers. “…care to blow the lock on this bear-trap?”

“Regrettably, Lucifer,” Hsi Wu’s mischievous-sounding voice came from one of the assembly of smoke-figures floating in the lightning-filled void; “we wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Well, you’ll have a lot of time to work it out,” Lucifer murmured darkly, removing his arm that was leaning on the grille. A couple voices among the red-eyed smoke-columns chuckled.

“Good point,” Drago’s voice spoke. “But we are demons. Not known for virtues like patience.”

“Or loyalty,” Dai Gui’s voice grated.

“Okay, guys, before you do anything rash…” Lucifer said calmly and darkly, stalking sideways in the Cage’s walls and pointing a finger.

“Why do you stress need for such trepidation?” Xiao Fung purred.

“We are out here – you are in there,” Hsi Wu murmured with a taunting, sing-song tone.

“Guys,” Lucifer’s voice was cutting now, lightning flashing before he spoke again, brows arched and eyes warningly cold. “This isn’t smart.”

“And why is that?” Po Kong’s voice came from the tallest and broadest smoke-column.

“Do you know where you’re out and about right now?” Lucifer said, pacing back and forth as he spoke before stopping and spreading his arms emphatically. “It begins with a H, ends with an _ell_. Then there’s me.” He brought his hands towards his upper-chest, putting his fingertips below his clavicles. “King of Hell. A demon in my world crosses in front of you, he asks where you fine new evil denizens came from. You say the Cage, he says he’ll go check that _at_ the Cage.” Lucifer narrowed his cold eyes intently. “What do I say?”

“Perhaps you can tell them how much damage you’ll do inside that box,” Tso Lan murmured in his dark, sophisticated voice. Lucifer could have bristled at the scathing remark, having loathed the Cage for every second he’d ever been imprisoned in it.

“You said your hell still has demons?” Drago murmured. “Their same old king-in-the-box tells them to hunt down a bunch of rogue demons, or _we_ tell them we have a whole universe of other power-keeping secrets to share. I know where I’d place _my_ bets.” Enough with the warnings, now Lucifer’s teeth were clenched, lips slightly-parted.

“We thank you for your help, Lucifer,” Xiao Fung purred.

“But for our reimprisonment, we owe you nothing,” Tchang Zu growled.

“You are a stronger evil than we are,” Bai Tza added, hissing voice cold and serious; “which spells one of three outcomes.”

“Submission. Stalemate. Or triumph.” Tso Lan murmured.

“ _Most of we nine_ ,” Dai Gui grated emphatically, “do not easily submit.”

“And only a _fool_ among the children of evil truly _trusts_ ,” Bai Tza said.

With that, the demon-sorcerers’ smoke forms began floating backwards or sideways, headed away from the Cage into the lightning-riddled dark void – as they went, Hsi Wu’s voice murmured, “Goodbye, Lucifer.” Hands on the grille, Lucifer watched them go. The smoke-shapes grew so far away they were only visible in lightning-flashes, then not at all. Lucifer’s slightly-ajar lips closed, face going from surprised to coolly calm.

“ _Evidently_ , loyalty is not one of my family’s strong suits.” Lucifer turned his head at the serpentine voice to the one remaining smoke demon-sorcerer inside the box, behind his back.

* * *

“ _AI YA_!”

Jade shot up in bed with a surprised gasp, green night-shirt hanging loosely over one shoulder, honey-brown eyes slightly wide. She remained frozen in that position for a few moments, before deciding to throw off the bedsheets that had been tidy the previous day. In her dreams, she’d remembered the missing detail from at the stadium title-fight yesterday, the thing she’d forgotten about, and suffice to say she thought it urgent enough to be worth bringing up with Uncle. Jade actually wondered if that thing was what Uncle’s unexpected rooster-call ruckus was about, emerging onto the landing overlooking the shop – just in time to see Uncle apply his two-fingered slap to himself, twice. Jackie in his pyjamas (with a breakfast bowl in hand), and Tohru in his overalls were also standing in the shop.

 _Whack._ ”Ow!”

 _Whack._ ”Ow!”

“Termites have been burrowing through _ALL OUR BRAINS_!” Uncle shrieked, messy hair practically standing on end as he pointed at his own head.

“What are you talking about?” Jade asked, rushing to the spiral staircase’s bottom step in her crop top and shorts.

“ _AI YA_!” his irritated response reminded Jade of what Tohru had said yesterday about his new crankiness, before he shouted over at her: “Demons and evil-angel are _not_ contained!” Jade’s eyes widened while Uncle went on, seemingly to himself as he paced with a raised finger: “The Primordial Arts sealed the ways in and out of the Nether-realm. But if Lucifer was already brought into universe by powerful magic-” Uncle stopped, beady eyes widening. “…then there will be a _hole_!”

“Inside the Demon Netherworld…” Jade finished quietly, eyes wide.

“But why worry about that, Uncle?” Jackie exclaimed – putting his bowl down on a glass-walled table and raising his arms as he spoke, the long-haired man looked quite beat. “We banished the demon-sorcerers, and Lucifer can no longer leave the Nether-realm!”

“CLEAN. TERMITES. OUT OF BRAIN!” Uncle suddenly shrieked in Jackie’s personal space, making the baggy-eyed archaeologist recoil.

“The demon-sorcerers and Lucifer _can_ leave,” Tohru murmured by Jackie’s side, eyes wide as the two met each-other’s gazes. “By entering _Lucifer’s universe_ through the hole his arrival left.”

“And we know the rules of magic aren’t the same over there…” Jade murmured aloud, eyes on the floor as she wracked her brain quickly, eyes widening when it clicked as she rambled. “Which means the Primordial Arts’ effect on them won’t apply there anymore, and they could punch a way back into our universe’s earthly realm again like Lucifer first did!”

“Jackie! Give Jade a free cookie from jar.” Uncle said somewhat dismissively as he was still pacing, earning a confused stare at his back from Jackie.

“…Why me, Uncle?”

“BECAUSE UNCLE CANNOT USE AGING ARM LIKE IS MADE OF METAL! _YOU WANT DEMONS TO WIN BECAUSE UNCLE HAS DEAD ARM_?!” The screaming old man held one skinny arm and swayed it like it were an old-fashioned hand water pump. He promptly began marching away towards the back of the shop as Jade watched on. “It is too risky. There is _one_ way to be certain – Uncle must ensure the demons have not left the Netherworld.” As he spoke, he picked a familiar mystical wreath up off a table he walked by.

* * *

The slightly-twisting corridor was dark and dull as the figure walked under its worn stone arcades, the shadows growing thickly across half the place – nearly everything in the corridor evoked a torture dungeon from medieval times, the only different thing being the dim red light from the symmetrical grates in the floor, some of which limp forms at the walls were manacled above. Even the sounds which constantly filled the corridor, sounding distant but not distant enough, could only belong in such a place – groans, moans, cries, wails, hellish cackling, metal clanging and clinking, even the odd hiss of what sounded like a powerful press machine. The bald, dark man in a beige jacket looked left and right as he passed through a slightly better-lit part of the corridor, looking inside the viewing grates of the dull cell doors – his current form wasn’t what he really looked liked, it was just what he wore from psychologically dismantling a prisoner he’d just tended to. The bald figure hadn’t moved on two steps from checking a cell, halting when he thought he saw something wispy disappear behind a pillar at a shadowed, black corner.

The bald man’s eyes turned abyss-black, before he advanced – if someone was skulking about the corridor who wasn’t supposed to be here, that meant they were in for a very bad afternoon, per regulation. The bald demon approached the black corner very slowly – nothing much out of the ordinary ever happened around here, and that made him a little bit wary. Entering the shadow under the arcade directly before the corner, the demon leaned forward – and was seized by the neck from the opposite corner, and pulled towards the wispy limb’s owner – a six-foot tall column of blue smoke loomed over the black-eyed demon, all-red eyes shining with light above his brow-line.

 _What was this thing_?! Whatever it was, the demon’s own strength did nothing against the smoke-being’s grip, this other entity’s being barely giving. The demon’s frame was spasming like he were being excerebrated alive, as another glowing-eyed figure made of smoke emerged from the corner the demon had been investigating, a nasally hiss coming from behind the demon’s back.

“How and where does one exit this realm, undetected?” A slightly-raspy female voice spoke from the smoke-column holding the demon.

Black eyes staring up, the gagging demon took two seconds before he began raising a shaky arm, pointing down the corridor – the pressure on his neck eased slightly, before he spoke with his voice raspy from the throat-grip; “Down there. You walk that way for a mile, turn left. Then you take the third right, the stairs are through there.” The glowing eyes looked back at him – the entity wanted more. “It’s a devil’s gate.” The words came out slightly louder, the demon forcing them with urgency. “No-one ever uses it. It’s only for the soul-janitors’ use, I swear.”

“Are you sure?” purred a mischievous, highly-raspy voice too close behind the demon’s back – wide eyes wide regaining a human-like appearance, the demon nodded. The hold on his neck sharply tightened, nearly enough to make him scream with the way it squeezed his essence – the strangling first entity lifted him closer, glowing eyes moving closer in turn.

“You should be _very_ sure.”

“I’m very sure, very!”

“Good,” the female-voiced smoke-entity purred in a very non-assuring tone. The grip around the demon’s neck crackled with bright-blue energy, and glowing dark-blue wisps began extending from the entity’s limb to coil and wrap around him like tendrils – his eyes were wide, the smoke-threads slicing at chunks of his being like barbed wire, triggering a blue flash from him with each slice. The demon got out a pathetic wheeze of a scream before the threads spread up and wholly encased his head – then the cocoon came crashing into all the demon’s sides, and there was a brownish flash from inside the smoke-cocoon as he perished.

* * *

**Devil’s Gate Dam, Pasadena**

“Jason, I don’t think we should be here,” protested a female voice, one of the only sounds in the dark ravine under the deep-blue night sky.

“Come on, Hayley,” a male voice replied. The varsity jacket-clad youngster pressed forward, trudging along the half-dried river bed and through still waters, his flashlight’s beam dancing on the rock wall and trees diagonally across the ravine – at his tail, the beanie-wearing blonde wrapped her arms tighter around her torso.

“Jason, suppose there’s somebody about?” the blonde, Hayley, protested, at which point the male turned.

“The road is right there.” At that moment, they both heard the distant whir of a motorbike shooting by.

“But it’s so dark down here,” the blonde continued, staying where she was while Jason pressed on. “Suppose there’s a gang about, with the stories about this place?”

“There aren’t,” Jason said quickly, eyes and flashlight-beam focused. “Look, it’s right here.” He pointed his flashlight beam, flicking it down and up the giant lumps in the ravine wall’s corner. “Hayley Chibnall, I give you…” He flicked his flashlight’s beam onto a circular tunnel exit in a smoothed part of the ravine wall, guarded by a padlocked pair of gates, the surrounding rock dotted with painted pentagrams and graffiti. “… _the gate into hell_!” He slowly turned, making the voice and face of every scary storyteller as he spoke. Hayley, still rooted to her former spot, rolled her eyes.

“Can we go now?”

“Wait, have you even seen the Devil’s face here yet?” Jason asked, turning and pointing his flashlight again.

“ _Where_?” Hayley deadpanned.

“It’s right here, in the rock face,” Jason said, pointing his torch again. “There’s the eye, and that’s the horn…” He trailed off as he felt a vibration getting through his mud boots’ soles, a subtle rumble filling the air. Looking down, Jason saw the shallow water’s surface was vibrating slightly, making it look like a sheet of rippled glass. The sound of objects tumbling and clapping made Jason immediately pivot his gaze upwards, at the ravine wall’s roof, though he saw no boulders come rolling towards them – only a few specks of stones rolling down. Ten seconds into the tremor, the rumble faded and the vibration slowly ceased – the ravine was still again, though the air seemed more silent than before. A pause followed, with Jason staying anxiously still as though another tremor might strike at any second – it lasted three seconds.

“Satan longs for your soul!” he exclaimed in a throaty, dramatic voice as he spun to face Hayley, grinning dementedly as he felt the flashlight under his chin. She snorted, rolling her eyes, then froze as another tremor struck them. This one started as strong as the first, but built in intensity within two seconds – Jason didn’t see the red light flash behind his back, but the sound of large rocks crashing to the water made him pivot, shining his torch. Behind the padlocked double-gate, a dull red light was flickering inside the tunnel like there were a dark-red fire – then abruptly, a cylindrical beam of the light burst from the gated tunnel, like a rocket were blasting off on the tunnel’s other side. Jason stared, rooted as red light washed over his face. He saw something indigo, between mist and lightning, appear on the gate lattices, less than two seconds before the double-gate suddenly blasted away from the rock wall. Shooting into the opposite ravine wall with a loud noise and bending forty-five degrees.

Inside the light-filled tunnel, a shape started materialising – it started as a slight smudge on the red light, then as it pressed forward, it materialised into a man-sized silhouette, the first discernible features being a pair of glowing red eyes on its head. Jason stared, stunned, as the figure glided out of the tunnel – literally _glided_ , boots’ tips below a dress-like hem floating a foot above the ravine floor. Jason had the urge to recoil as the straight-backed figure halted not far from him and Hayley – though it remained partially silhouetted, Jason now saw the glowing-eyed figure looked like a man with insanely-long hair, wearing robes that looked like they belonged in Asian tradition. Jason heard a chuckle from back at the gate. A second figure emerged through the red beam – a broad-shouldered man wearing tattered-looking clothes, eyes glowing just like the first figure’s. He joined the first figure in the ravine. Next, a figure as wide as it was tall emerged, a gruff-sounding cackle heralding it. Jason didn’t make the third figure out until it was nearly past the gate’s threshold – the nude, obese woman’s bare, pudgy legs stomped through the water ahead of the petrified youngsters. The next figure was a gigantic brute of a man, wearing only a sophisticated-looking loincloth – then a slimmer woman, also naked judging by the highlighted contours, hissed ferally as she became visible. Jason backed up slightly, hearing Hayley to the same just behind him as more figures emerged, a nasally snicker echoing before the red glow faded. In front of the reputed Devil’s Gate, seven figures in varying states of dress and nakedness stood in the valley, humanlike save for their all-red, glowing eyes – a particularly-scrawny man breathed in through his nostrils, eyes’ glow disappearing as he closed them.

“Ah, the smell of a bloodless night,” he murmured in a hoarse voice, spreading his arms and pivoting his near-naked body d. Jason’s attention immediately shifted, as a couple of the glowing-eyed figures were looking straight at him – the robed, long-haired figure sharply raised an arm, hand glowing.

“ _Jason_!” Hayley cried out as soon as his feet left the ground, gravity’s hold on him suddenly gone. Still flailing, Jason drifted through the air towards the figures – it wasn’t like some force was carrying him above the ground, it was more like he’d lost all weight while something guided his centre of gravity. Hearing splashes, Jason looked over his shoulder for Hayley. She was running through water, towards the trail that led out of the ravine. Growling with a deep voice, the giant loincloth-brute put a hand in the water. And he tore out a chunk of the river bed _twice_ his hand’s size, water flooding into the hole he’d made. He threw the giant chunk one-handed. It smashed the trail a couple feet in front of Hayley, making her cry and skid to a stop. Chuckling in a deep voice, the long-haired figure extended his free arm, hand glowing. And Hayley floated off the trail with a cry and was drawn towards them.

“A human,” the brute who’d torn out the river bed said, voice almost-impossibly deep.

“How interesting.”

“And where there’s humans, there’s an Earth…” murmured the tattered-clothed silhouette, folding his thin arms – then he craned his head to shift his glowing gaze upward.

“And where there’s a world, there’s a place to conquer,” purred an oily, tomcat-like voice – gazes were on the overhead road-bridge as one trail of headlight beams, then another, tracked horizontally across it, several voices’ dark chuckles filling the ravine.

* * *

Jade, Jackie and Tohru watched Uncle’s back from the study room’s open door, Jade’s arms crossed seriously – Uncle was cross-legged on the floor in a meditative posture, wearing atop his head the bauble- and candle-decorated wreath. Though they couldn’t see his face, they had no doubt a spark of bright-green would be flickering between his entranced eyes at this moment.

Uncle began standing up, removing the wreath from his head before turning to face them – his goatish face was dark as he reported; “The Demon Nether-realm is empty.”

 _Which means we have demons to hunt_ , Jade thought, and honestly she had mixed feelings – on one hand, she felt a lot more enthusiastic about a new magic-hunt just like in her childhood than she would’ve two days ago, on the other hand she was a bit daunted by the thought of pursuing all nine demon-sorcerers in an alternate universe that _Lucifer_ _came from_.

“ _One more thing_! Have located the door to the other universe,” Uncle said, already removing items from the study’s shelves.

Tohru immediately squeezed through the door to begin helping, while Jackie questioned innocently at the door, “How are we to return the demons to the Netherworld once we find them?”

“We have a solution,” Tohru said before Uncle could snap. He turned back to the younger two Chans as he said; “Using spells, we insert a pocket realm which will hold the demons, inside this.” He was holding a dull bronze oil lamp, faint engravings of dragons etched in its surface.

“No. Way.” Jade deadpanned – the thing looked like it belonged in an Aladdin movie.

“But how can we defeat the demons with chi-spells, if their magic does not work in the other universe?” Jackie whispered with a hand by his ear, evidently not wanting to irk Uncle.

“Presumably, Lucifer’s magic and at least some of the rules in his own universe still functioned on him when he was over here – if we cast the spells in our universe it will likely be the same, and the demon-sorcerers as beings of our universe will be as susceptible to them as ever,” Tohru explained fluidly, before Jade spoke up.

“What about Lucifer? Will the Primordial Arts tablets work in his world?”

“No!” Uncle said. “Tablets were made in _this_ universe _for_ this universe. Does no-one but Uncle _pay. Attention_?!”

“Besides – we do not know what will happen if we attempt to use the Primordial Arts in the other reality,” Tohru added. Jade turned to Jackie on the doorway’s other side – he had a look on his face that vaguely reminded her of an unfit schoolkid getting roped into gymnastics, before he spoke despondently.

“I should call Captain Black, let him know not to stop by in the week…”

The Chan Clan spent a couple hours working on the lamp. First, nearly an hour of Jackie, Jade and Uncle gathering all the ingredients from the various shelves (and Jackie retrieving a solitary vial stored in a near-empty kitchen cupboard). Tohru meanwhile made mung-bean sandwiches in the kitchen, wrapping each in plastic and stacking them inside a rucksack. Once the ingredients were gathered, Jade and her uncles started drawing the first chalk-lines of a sigil on the study’s floor. They’d only drawn several inches of white each when a rhythmic door-knock made them halt and raise their heads.

Jade heard Tohru say as he opened the front door halfway, “I’m sorry, we are closed.”

“That’s okay. Just stopping by to say hi to friends.”

At the sound of the bearded man’s voice, Jade poked half her body through the study’s doorway, smiling. “Captain Black?”

“I wasn’t about to let you disappear into an alternate dimension for who-knows-how-long without some backup,” the bald man said, smiling.

Uncle’s voice immediately hollered from inside the study, “It is _alternate UNIVERSE_ , not alternate _DIMENSION_!” Jade promptly detached herself from the study door and walked forward, shaking her head but smiling slightly at her older uncle’s antics.

“Where’s Major Gómez?”

“Back in Washington where he belongs,” Captain Black said, smiling. “I’d offer to take three agents and go with you, but with the state Section 13’s in… This’ll have to do.” He removed what looked to Jade like an elegant chrome joystick with a single red button on top. “Sonic grenade,” he said, handing it to Jade who looked from the device back to his face, her eyes slightly wide. “Don’t leave home without it.”

“Sweet.”

“Good luck, to everyone,” Captain Black said, nodding his head as he turned from her to Tohru. Jade and Tohru responded with warm smiles.

Ten minutes later, the Chans were chanting with various lanterns and chi-weapons before four green beams shot into the Aladdin-lamp at the sigil’s centre.

“Now, we must target the universal hole using magic,” Uncle declared, holding up the subject lamp which hissed fresh, thin green smoke.

And so came another round of selecting and arranging ingredients, pouring them into an empty dog-legged candle-holder and a pair of thuribles. Jade didn’t have too much trouble getting the right ingredients, whereas Jackie got a couple yells in his face from Uncle for giving the wrong ingredient. The clock on the opposite wall outside the study door read 4:10 when Uncle, sat cross-legged in front of the candle-holder, sprinkled powder from between his thumb and fingers into its dish – before he put his palms together and closed his eyes.

“ _Yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ , _yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ …”

“How exactly does this spell work?” Jade inquired from Tohru standing next to her, the two of them and Jackie holding thuribles that hissed green smoke.

“The spell will hone in on the universe-breaching rift inside the Netherworld, and open an offshoot of the same rift here,” Tohru explained calmly. Not two seconds later, the top of the candle holder suddenly flared with bright green light. “Now.” Tohru, Jade and Jackie immediately began hopping on one foot in a circle around Uncle, swinging their thuribles which began to glow, taking over chanting from Uncle.

“ _Yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ , _yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ , _yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ …” Opening his eyes, Uncle watched with light casting shadows on his face, as the green light from the candle-holder gradually turned white. As the old man stood, a beam shot vertically from the holder, forming a white ball of sparks four feet above the floor. Everyone watched with almost baited breath, as a sound like ice or metal hissing was in the air. After a brief pause, a gigantic dark mass suddenly unfolded from the white ball’s centre, filling nearly the entire study and knocking the candle-holder over. Reaching almost from one side of the room horizontally to the other, and about as tall as Tohru, the dark mass had rippling edges, and inside was blackness with grey streaks sliding and vanishing towards the centre like a screensaver-image. Uncle wordlessly turned and walked towards a wall – Tohru in response, went towards the opposite wall. The sumo picked up the sandwich-filled rucksack from a desk, and held a petrified purple lizard near them – the lizard glowed green, then the sandwiches. Jade and Jackie both eyed him in bemusement, awaiting an answer.

“From the way normal magic doesn’t affect Lucifer, chi as we understand it might not even exist in the other universe,” Tohru said as he finished the spell, having evidently caught their gazes – then he slung the rucksack over his much-larger back. “In our world, chi flows through all living things, it is as vital to us as sunlight; so we will need to take a packed lunch.” Jade nodded.

“We will also need these for extra spells,” Uncle said, all but staggering from the opposite wall with nearly a dozen different ingredients and chi-weapons between his arms and chest.

“Let’s go,” Jackie said as Uncle walked over – finishing depositing the chi-artefacts in a shoulder-bag – the long-haired man’s eyebrows low and face stern. He was a millisecond from starting a sprint across the study when Uncle raised a finger in front of him.

“No. Uncle and Tohru shall go first.” Already marching forward, Uncle said, “If door does not work, there is less chance of chi-wizards getting cut in half.” Jackie’s eyes widened, and Jade thought she heard him gulp saliva in his throat.

“He’s kidding, right?” Jackie said, him and Jade looking at Tohru – who shrugged before marching forward as well. Uncle put one leg over the rift’s bottom edge, then the other, and Tohru hunched slightly to fit inside the dark mass’s edges. There was no flash or dissolve effect, no whirling vortex – the two chi-wizards’ lower-legs just disappeared past the mass’s bottom edge, and the light on them was slightly dimmer inside the mass, the hurtling grey streaks behind them making it look like they were standing in front of a computer screen. Both men turned their heads left and right, seeking some kind of reaction. They locked gazes, and Uncle shrugged his shoulders.

“Hm. Perhaps Uncle used too mu-” They both suddenly disintegrated, cutting Uncle off – bodies turning to grey, white, yellow and bright-brown spaghetti-like strands, which immediately hurtled further from the rift entrance and quickly vanished into the black.

“Uncle!”

“Whoa.” Jade quietly deadpanned at the same time Jackie yelled. For a brief moment, the two remaining Chans stared into the rift’s dark maw – Jade thought, and she was unconvinced the spell could’ve taken those two chi-wizards by surprise if it had gone deathly-wrong, it just didn’t fit – even as she remembered a couple times when they hadn’t seen a spell-backfire coming.

“Looks like it’s our turn, Jackie,” Jade said, putting a hand on his shoulder and smiling half-reassuringly – eyebrows stern, Jackie nodded, and Jade wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen him nod at her like she were a fellow warrior rather than his kid niece. They walked forward, putting their legs over the rift’s bottom edge. The light quality changed once they were inside the rift like they’d just stepped into a shadowed three-walled room. Apart from the hole into the study behind them, there was just endless blackness above, below and on two sides, and the grey streaks shooting towards a centre-point in front. Jackie sniffed – the sound of him doing so didn’t bounce off any surfaces, travelling and fading inside the rift.

“It smells like ozone in he-” Jade wasn’t really sure what happened next – cut off from what Jackie was saying, suddenly she had no sense of direction and nothing was clear. There were spinning, twisting blurs and whooshes of colour and black; a cacophony of hisses, howls, and piercing noises like screeching metal. She was flying, weaving, shooting, turning, falling, rising – it all rolled over her too fast, she couldn’t really even tell when one sensation ended and the next began if they did at all. In an equally-unclear wave, she felt herself being tugged, crushed, freezing, bending and coiling. Then it all exploded in an ultra-bright flash. After the senseless wave of sensations she’d just been through, the sudden blinding flash in Jade’s vision was disconcerting with how it remained rather than turn to something else. Her mind was numb as the dull-white slowly gave way to blackish blotches pointed towards her vision’s centre-point. The blotches became sticks, which became something thicker. Jade suspected she was on her back, but wasn’t sure until the dark sticks solidified enough for her to make out tree-trunks around her vision, with pencil-line limbs rapidly forming on them. She heard some familiar voices talking, but they sounded muted and distant initially. Not hearing herself groan slightly, Jade tried forcing herself up off the forest floor – she’d started too soon, immediately feeling like she was pushing her back away from a high vertical wall. Stopping there, she put a hand to her forehead and remained still, waiting for her brain’s senses to re-balance. She was aware of someone coming close beside her, clothes brushing slightly.

“Jade, are you okay?” Tohru’s deep voice said.

“Peachy,” she quipped to get everyone’s spirits up, starting to feel like she was on solid ground again, vision around her becoming clearer. They were indeed among trees – by how thick their trunks were and how large they grew, and by the uneven floor beneath Jade with thick roots breaking through, it looked like they were in a forest. Old grey and brown leaves littered the forest floor, while the skeletal trees above Jade were just sprouting their first tufts of green. A pale-grey sky filtered through from above the trees.

“Where’s Jackie?” she asked, looking around. Speak of the devil, she saw her long-haired uncle leaning against a tree for support as he staggered to his feet nearby, one hand hiding his face from view as he groaned slightly.

“Do not lean forward, you will regain balance _slower_!” Uncle was standing a few feet to Jackie’s side, wagging a straight index finger as he lectured him. “Uncle taught you this when you were _teenager_!” Leaning on Tohru with one arm, Jade got to her feet, senses quickly returning. Craning her head, she re-examined their surroundings – all around them, she only saw hilly woodland, though the land sharply dipped in one direction and she thought they might find a road if they looked in that direction. It looked like nearly every North American national park she’d been to.

“So… no black sun or blood moons?” Jade murmured, looking at the earthly-seeming grey sky again. She hadn’t been sure what to expect in Lucifer’s universe, but she’d doubted it could be anything good if the Devil came from it. Endless fire and brimstone, plague-battered cities and fire raining from the sky maybe, not this.

“It appears not,” Tohru murmured, while Uncle marched away from Jackie. Then, the sumo’s dark eyes became momentarily thoughtful behind his spectacles, before he said; “Perhaps in a universe where Lucifer is real, there is a Hell and there is an _Earth_.”

“Duh,” Jade scolded herself - _why hadn’t she thought of that, it made sense_ – before a sound like loudly-crackling ice drew her gaze. Behind her and Tohru, Uncle was standing before the universe-rift’s dark mass which hovered a couple feet above the forest floor – a beam fired from his chi-blowfish into the rift’s mouth, and its edges suddenly rippled with increased energy, then collapsed, the rift vanishing just as quickly as it had appeared.

“You’re closing the portal?” Jackie murmured, stepping over with only one hand on his head, senses regained.

“Closing – _not locking_ ,” Uncle said quietly, finger raised – then he held up his blowfish. “Uncle has the key.” Jackie then craned his head, looking at the forestry around them.

“This is not what I was expecting,” he murmured.

“On the plus side, if this is another universe’s Earth, and we came out in a different place to Lucifer and the demons, we might not have to worry about Feathers,” Jade noted almost as soon as the thought occurred to her.

“Look,” Tohru said, pointing skyward. Craning her head, Jade saw the tiny black smudge moving across the sky beyond the branches, the distant hum of the helicopter’s rotor blades just reaching her ears.

“Either the forces of evil in Lucifer’s universe like technology…” Jade began.

“…or there _are_ people here,” Tohru finished, smiling.

“Perhaps. We should look around first.” Jackie wasn’t smiling – he turned and began marching away through the trees.

“I’d look _that_ way first,” Jade murmured with a playful smirk, pointing to sloping land in front of her – Jackie gawked at her momentarily, then strode off in the direction she’d indicated, sighing.

* * *

Sadly for Jackie, Jade, Uncle and Tohru, they spent longer than several seconds trudging through the woods without finding any road. After they’d been walking for twenty minutes, Uncle – being carried in Tohru’s arms like a dearly-valued ventriloquist’s dummy – reached and broke off a particularly-thin low branch on a tree they passed.

“Ai ya. Put me on the floor!” he shrieked impatiently in his carrier’s face, momentarily giving Jade the mental image of a bawling Uncle-baby in a mommy-Tohru’s arms – she immediately stifled a laugh, unnoticed, while Tohru obeyed Uncle. The old man broke a large twig off the branch, and crossed the twig and branch over each-other in a large X at the tree-trunk’s foot.

“No bread to spare for leaving a trail,” Jackie murmured aloud in realisation, as if that weren’t obvious as Jade glanced at him – then the four continued walking. Once in a while, Uncle made more twig-crosses at trees’ feet. Jade grew more sure he was deliberately doing it with decreasing frequency, when he started shouting and complaining at Jackie after more than an hour (according to her wristwatch) of walking through endless wilderness. Jade meanwhile, observed the trees themselves – the firs and red maples suggested they were still in North America if Lucifer’s world’s Earth was anything like theirs, but she was worried they could have landed in the middle of a national forest (and that was assuming Lucifer’s universe wasn’t just an endless wilderness, or didn’t just look like the earthly world as part of some kind of neverending-wilderness, eternal-torment trick). She was pretty sure Jackie was on the verge of saying they should double back when finally, they came crosswise to an empty road, with a yellow double-line separating two lanes. Though they didn’t see any traffic, they didn’t have to follow the road for more than half a mile before a single-floor, L-shaped building loomed ahead, built in a clearing beside the road with trees and mountain behind it, a road sign by the road spelling ‘FRANKIE’S MOTEL’. Jackie sighed and they all smiled at the sight.

A bell rang above the door as the Chan Clan entered. The lobby wasn’t particularly modern – a simple reception desk right of the entrance door, with a chubby-armed receptionist in a chequered shirt behind it turning a newspaper’s pages with one finger. On the left as Jackie approached the reception desk were a couple simple couches and a table by a row of waist-level windows, through which daylight illuminated the lobby.

“Hello, we are looking for a room?”

“Mm-hm,” the man gruffly responded to Jackie’s friendly voice, head still lowered. “For how many?”

“Four, please,” Tohru said behind Jackie, beginning to lower Uncle.

“ _Ai ya_!” Uncle exclaimed. “Uncle’s bones still ache from your footsteps’ vibrating!” This time, Jade winced beside Uncle’s back.

“Please sign here,” the newspaper man mumbled, taking out a pen and paper and sliding them towards Jackie. “It’s cash only, we don’t accept credit… _card_ …” He trailed off, having raised his balding head and looking at his customer - a pause passed, then he disturbingly lit up. “Oh, my gawd…”

“Hm?” was the only sound Jackie responded with while the Chan Clan stared.

“You’re Jackie Chan!” the man exclaimed energetically.

Jackie cried out, and Jade and Tohru gaped. “How do you know that?!”

“Oh, my, it’s- My cousin is a huge fan. She has half of all yours movies on DVD!” The man said, shaking his head and raising his hands with new life. “Actually, do you mind if I take a picture with you?” He got out a flip-phone as he spoke.

“Uh…” Jackie glanced over his shoulder back at Jade and Tohru, sharing a bemused look with them. “I… think there might be a mistake.”

“ _Oh_ , I see,” the man murmured knowingly and dramatically – somehow, Jade’s suspicion Lucifer had something to do with this decreased. In a slightly-hushed tone, the man said, “You don’t want anybody knowing you’re here? Hoping to escape all the media attention, is that it? I completely understand. In fact-” He hurriedly scribbled on the paper with the pen. “-I’ll put you in the inside-corner room. It’s the comfiest room we have, and _no-one_ will think to look for you there! Can I get that photo though? Ooh, and…” The receptionist went to the wall behind the desk, plucking a case off the shelf and returning. “…could I get an autograph on this for my cousin?” Jackie took the VHS, looking at the cover. A second later, he cried out loudly, and Jade gaped when she saw over his shoulder the reason. The title _Operation Condor_ was emblazoned on the cover’s bottom, and standing against a blue background, arms crossed and posing, was Jackie – hair short like it used to be, smiling out from the image.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Jade was watching her uncle’s lookalike from the movie on their motel room’s TV screen, as he fought off villains using lightning-fast reflexes. Across the motel suite from the bed’s edge Jade was sitting on; Jackie was at a table, while Uncle and Tohru were sitting on the floor and quietly chanting. Between the chi-wizards, a tuft of grey cat’s hair was glowing faintly green – Uncle had extracted it from his shoulder-bag of spell ingredients. Jade hit pause on the DVD player’s remote.

“Looks like, in this universe, you’re a movie star,” Jade murmured, turning her head and meeting Jackie’s gaze. She smirked at him as she added, “Guess celebrity-status can get us free, non-chi food.”

“I will not use the other me’s celebrity to steal food,” Jackie said firmly.

“Just kidding,” Jade said innocently as she stood and walking towards him, raising her palms. She came up behind his shoulder and looked at the map in his table, smile gone. “You found the nearest town?”

“Ashland. It’s fifteen miles from here.” He pointed and traced southwest on the map. “As the motel manager said, we are in Oregon – and it appears you were right about this universe being like our world.

“Once Uncle and Tohru’s spell has located the first demon, I will ask the hotel manager when he is next going to town and if he can give us a ride,” Jackie said.

“I’ll go too,” Jade said seriously. “If there’s a library in town, we should get as much local info on Lucifer as we can.” Jackie nodded – before a sound immediately drew both their gazes.

“ _Hat-cha_!” Uncle and Tohru had stopped chanting, focusing on the glowing tuft.

“Why did we wait until after we’d wandered the woods to cast that spell?” Jade asked, frowning.

“Uncle did not have roof over his head in the forest!” Uncle excused without taking his focus off the spell – Jade smirked and snorted, while Jackie silently rolled his eyes.

“Maybe we could get that motel guy to take us into town right away – seeing as my uncle’s a movie star.”

“That is not funny, Jade.”

“The time for that may be here,” Tohru murmured, drawing both Jade and Jackie’s attention back to the chi-wizards. “The spell has sensed the first demon.” The tuft’s glow brightened, and it slowly lifted off the floor – suspended at about three feet, it rotated in the air like a rusted cog.

* * *

**Three states over…**

The couple in contrasting colours – a balding man in a black overcoat, a woman in a white business coat – made little noise but were softly giggling as they strode down the rain-damp sidewalk, lit at night by a mix of streetlights and the multicoloured glows of stores’ and taverns’ fronts, while the odd car rolled by on the road. Both were oblivious to the beast that spied them with its head close to the ground level across the street, breathing low and growling, its vision a slightly discoloured image compared to what humans’ eyes captured.

“So I told him; what the heck are you doing with your free time, Nick,” the husband was telling his wife, as they turned into an alley.

“You didn’t!”

The beast’s breathing picked up slightly as it watched its prey enter the lane, where every surface between the two entry/exit points was cloaked in shadow – perfect place for feeding, it appealed to the creature’s instincts to stay out of sight.

“…so I said; what’s your excuse, and he just stormed out!” the husband told his wife.

“Ah, you’re making it up!”

No-one had seen nor heard the beast moving swiftly from its former position, moving fast up to and crouching behind the black shadow of a dumpster, spying its prey past the object’s edge.

“I don’t know what he’s complaining about, it’s not like I ripped his throat out,” the husband murmured; before he was suddenly jerked down like his ankles were tied to a speeding truck’s rear-bumper. He had one second to register his cheek painfully hitting the alley floor, before he was sharply dragged backwards with renewed force. The woman screamed at the top of her voice but didn’t run, as the man or man-shaped thing dragged her husband like he were a ragdoll. The scream excited the beast’s predatory instincts, making him raise his head to look at her with a snarl, canine fangs jutting past his upper and lower lips, pale-grey animal-eyes wide on his human-shaped face. Only then did the woman choose to run with a cry.

_RAAAW-_

_BLAM!_

The beast stumbled off the pinned prey he had been about to slash with its claws, grunting in surprise and pain from the wound to the back of his shoulder. The grizzled man who’d fired the bullet stood at the alley’s mouth behind the monster, angular-boned face calm and cold, firing stance professional, and he stood tall with neck-length, wavy brown hair. The beast turned his face, snarling in rage. The gunman’s thin eyebrows shifted in realisation. At the alley’s far end, the wife collided with the chest of the second figure just as he rounded the corner he’d been behind, almost recoiling in fright as he rapidly shooed her on, gun in one hand, her husband promptly following – the second man had shorter, brown hair compared to the first, and his facial features were more smooth and rugged with heavy eyelids. The beast spun to look behind his back at the other opponent, snarling – the scent of hormones reached the beast’s nostrils, telling him how genetically-alike the two individuals were. The shorter-haired man didn’t waste any time, face hard as he fluidly aimed and fired his gun.

“ _ARGH_!” the beast rasped as the bullet blasted through him over the point that the first bullet had missed, and he immediately fell. He was left staring up at the black, starless sky above the alley’s wall – at least until the two assailants entered the wounded beast’s field of vision, looking at him with slightly more warmth than before. The beast didn’t waste energy snarling up at them, feeling his life ebb with the fatal rupture to his heart’s outer-walls by silver – in less than two seconds, the beast’s teeth morphed and his fangs vanished, beastly grey eyes taking on a human eye-colour, and the beast was no more.

“Help… me…” The dying werewolf was choking on his own blood. The longer-haired man just knelt and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay…” The dying man held his comforter’s hazel eyes, bleary and confused – then he was gone.

* * *

Ten minutes later, the shorter-haired of the two hunter brothers was walking from a burger-shack towards the old AMC Gremlin his taller, younger brother was sitting atop the hood of, road-food in hand.

“Your aim was off,” was Dean Winchester’s blunt greeting to his brother as he handed him his brown bag and drink with a straw, before hoisting his own rear atop the hood.

“Yeah!” Sam all but snorted without much mirth as they dug into their meals. “I guess going through the Russian Sleep Experiment will do that to you…” he murmured; indeed, he hadn’t even shaved the short beard he’d gained during that torturous period.

“The what?” Dean turned his head to ask with his mouth full, clueless. His response made Sam immediately sigh in disbelief through his nostrils.

“Dude, come on! It’s an urban legend, like uh, Slenderman – you of all people should know it.” Dean just shrugged, though he wasn’t smiling as he chewed his food. Not a moment later, a ring-tune caught Sam’s attention, making him grunt with his still-recovering body as he moved to slip the ringing flip-phone from his jacket’s pocket – he answered and put it to his ear.

“Hello? …Martin, yeah, hi.” That name got Dean’s attention. “…You’re where?” Sam look down when he spoke next. “Yeah, sure we’ll be right over. …Thanks.” He ended the call.

“Martin as in the cuckoolander Martin?” Dean questioned.

“Yeah, uh,” Sam answered; “he’s on a case in Utah. Said he broke his leg, wouldn’t be any more good – asked us to look into it. I dunno, it sounded like it could be a Leviathan thing.”

“Alright, I guess we’re going to Utah,” Dean murmured, adding a chip to the sizeable amount of food he was already chewing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Devil’s Gate Dam is a real-life location which I replicated from photos and research in this chapter.


	8. Motel Hell, The Sequel

A day of sleep and driving later, and the old-gold and dull-white AMC Gremlin was pulling into the U-shaped motel building's parking lot – a rather stylish building that had recently had a makeover, with the chrome colours and the 50s-like aesthetic, the sign shaped like a four-point star emblazoned with the text, 'JAMES BROWN MOTEL', reminding Dean of a retro diner.

Holding up his fake FBI badge, Dean Winchester didn't feel all that good, standing in the stylish motel's clean, techy-looking lobby next to his brother - he usually treasured it when they got a motel room with no cold shower, but when he and Sam had last stayed in a motel this fancy, it had turned out a bunch of gods were preparing a Sawyer dinner-buffet.

"So, first the cops and now the FBI are interested in this whole disappearing-business?" said the skinny kid behind the reception desk, his near-smile and body language betraying how little he thought the whole thing was.

"Well, when three people disappear and a mangled body turns up in a ditch, that's usually a sign the feds should get involved," Dean replied, forcing a smile.

"So, where were you the night that Kelly Duval disappeared?" Sam asked.

"I was on duty," the kid replied. Dean had noted Sam's face still looked a bit too thin after his episode at the mental hospital, especially with the hollows under his cheeks. "I was cleaning up the eating hall, taking dishes back to the kitchen." He slowly shook his head, still smiling. " _Nothing_ _out of the ordinary_."

"And you would've had to have gone past Room 17 to get to the kitchen?" Dean said.

"That's right." The kid nodded.

And none of the guests were out of their rooms?" Dean envied the kid's energy, yet also could've curled his lip in contempt.

"Nope," the kid said.

"Right," Dean said. "We'll need to see the security footage from the times of the disappearances. And the room where Ms. Duval was staying."

"Number two's okay, but you'll have to talk to the manager about number one," the smiling kid said, then pointed at the plate glass behind Dean and Sam. "His office is right at the end, you can see it clear as a bell when you come in."

"We'll do that."

"Who else was on duty that night?" Sam asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Three of the four kitchen staff, the manager, and two maids," the kid said. "The kitchen staff are all there right now, but the maids don't start work until just before sundown."

"Right," Dean said, him and Sam both smiling, before they promptly began winding around the desk.

"We've got couple and non-couple rooms available if you need one!"

"We've got a place," Dean replied, not turning back or slowing his walk from the desk.

* * *

Dean's sigh was quite audible to Sam as the older Winchester sunk onto the sofa, across the motel room from where Sam sat at his laptop, both men still wearing their fed suits' white shirts and ties.

"No EMF, no sulphur – no black goo," Dean said. "And I don't think the human-burrito makers have the brains to walk into a motel and get people out quietly."

"It could still be a Leviathan thing," Sam said without turning round, the laptop screen illuminating his face.

"I don't think so," Dean murmured. "This doesn't seem like them, going Norman Bates." A slight sound of liquid chugging made Sam glance over his shoulder – he froze his neck and his face immediately shifted, before he scoffed. Sitting at the couch by the adjacent wall, legs on the coffee table and their dad's journal in one hand, Dean was drinking from a flask.

"Dean, you've emptied and refilled that thing three times in six hours!" Sam said.

"Yeah, well I think I've earned a drink on the job," Dean said, stopping to give Sam his _I'm-not-gonna-say-I'm-in-the-wrong-for-this_ look.

"Idjit," neither brother heard the bearded ghost in the trucker cap groan where he leaned against the wall near Dean's spot.

"We've got next to nothing new on how-to-kill-Leviathan, and I watched you curl up and nearly die of Satan-insomnia five days ago," Dean said. "So I say screw the sobriety-check." He took another swig.

"That isn't one drink, Dean, it's quarter-a-dozen," Sam said pointedly.

"Yeah, well screw you, Dr. Phil," Dean murmured offhandedly. "There anything on the motel's history?"

"Not really," Sam sighed, turning back to the tattered newspaper archived on the internet webpage. "I mean, a dad and a little girl stopped by there in '86 before they disappeared – the cops determined a crazed lady the dad was seeing killed and dumped them. Apart from that, it's squeaky-clean." He brought up a new window on his laptop, on which grainy footage of the James Brown Motel's lobby viewed in high-angle began playing. "I'm gonna look over that security footage."

"Alright, well while you do that, I'm gonna call the coroner's office about the dead family," Dean said, standing up and removing his cellphone.

"You're not gonna help me look through seven-plus days of lobby footage?" Sam asked pointedly, looking at his older brother as he walked past.

"I'm already doing research over there," Dean said, pointing over at the coffee table. Sam sighed, shaking his head slightly as he looked back at the laptop screen.

"Jerk."

"Bitch," Dean replied without looking behind his shoulder, putting the phone to his ear.

Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty-five – the phone call to the coroner's turned up bupkis, and Dean went back to looking in the journal at the coffee table, while Sam remained stuck at the laptop screen combing through footage. Sam wasn't all that enthusiastic compared to what Dean could be like – at least when Sam was stuck researching lore or buildings' histories, his brain was a bit more stimulated – but he still stuck with it. Thirty minutes later, Sam was watching an angular camera shot of the motel hallway, a figure covered by static and green highlight pushing through a door.

"Hey, Dean, check this out," he said in less than two seconds, only turning his head a fraction.

"What you got?" Dean said mid-stride across the room, before leaning his head in over Sam's shoulder. They watched the figure – a woman from the white towel and robe wrapped around her, through the static haze and highlight obscured her appearance – standing in the doorway which she almost blocked with her huge girth; talking to a dark-suited man whose back faced the camera, having apparently paused mid-stride.

"Well, that's not weird at all," Dean murmured sarcastically, eyes remaining on the screen, and Sam snorted in agreement. The suited man adjusted his feet's course and entered the door, the static-woman backing out of sight to make space for him.

"Hang on a sec, rewind that," Dean said, pointing. Sam did so. "There, stop." Sam replayed the footage when the figures were talking. He saw the detail that was there a split-second, hitting the pause button in a knee-jerk reaction. The image froze – a pair of small red blotches near the motel guest's head half-pierced the green highlight and the static.

"You're right, that isn't weird," Sam said with equal sarcasm, before looking up at Dean.

Another ten minutes of researching followed, this time looking up lore – Sam searched the web, while Dean flipped through their dad's journal. Sam was expecting it to take a while and for them to not find much, with how sketchy what they already had to go on was, but was surprised after only twenty minutes.

"Hey, I think I've found something in here," Dean said slightly-loudly from the couch, making Sam turn his head.

"What?" Sam asked, while Dean stood up.

"Korrigan," Dean said, holding the journal up and looking at the pages as he walked. "A creature which has a retinal reaction to video – like shifters, except the eyes turn red."

"It's not a korrigan, dammit!" the ghost that had been Bobby Singer in life groaned loudly at the wall, though he remained unheard to the living. Dean seated himself opposite Sam while still looking at the journal.

"The lore goes, they entice men and lure them in, then devour them," Dean went on. "Dad thought they were related to a European god, but most hunters he knew thought they were a siren cousin."

"I dunno," Sam sighed, uncertain. "I mean, it's something, but I think there's gotta be more."

"Right," Dean said. "Well, Dad didn't mention how to kill the suckers, so unless you find something better – you've got extra homework." Dean smiled slightly-mischievously again.

"You've got homework too," Sam said pointedly. "Finish checking Dad's journal for something else."

"On it," Dean said, drinking from the flask again as he looked back at the journal. Sam sighed through his nostrils.

* * *

The man in the cap and beige pants was whistling as he strode down the motel corridor, the clean white light on the walls' polished dark wood creating a pleasant atmosphere, a shopping bag filled with food supplies, held against his chest – he saw the room door on his left open ahead of him, but ignored it until the towel-clad woman stepped halfway through the doorway and spoke.

"Excuse me." He stopped. She was huge – just under five feet tall and wide, she looked like she'd struggle to fit her entire body through the doorframe, and she had an oblong-shaped face with Asian features which was currently covered by a mask of skin cream. "I've noticed you've been here for a while." Narrowing her dark-brown eyes and smirking mischievously, the face-cream woman pointed a long-nailed finger at her opened door's exterior peephole. The man felt ready to saunter off for about one second, before that all began evaporating. What had he been thinking before he'd wound up here, talking to this lovely woman? She observed the unblinking man's bag of groceries held to his chest, and she murmured in her deep but agreeable voice; "Hmm." She looked like her face probably received a lot of lines, with her huge, almost jagged lips. "Perhaps you'd like to come into _my_ room for dinner?"

"Is everything alright, Ms. Kong?" said a bland voice, the manager in his red suit striding down the corridor, straight-backed.

"Oh, everything is perfectly alright, Mr. Baston," the masked-faced woman, Ms. Kong, said very-amicably, looking over at the manager and smiling her broad, crooked smile. Like that were all the reassurance he needed, the manager's face returned to his course down the hallway. "Now, how about dinner?" Ms. Kong asked the man with the shopping bag, tone filled with delight as she gestured with one arm to the inside of her room.

"Okay," he agreed, grinning as he stepped forward into the doorway. "Fine with me." Inside, he found the room looked quite tidy, though the bed was a mess and the air smelled oddly tangy – the curtains were closely drawn so only a slit of light got through, the overhead light illuminating the room with its relatively-colourful walls. The man didn't see Ms. Kong put the 'DO NOT DISTURB' sign on the now half-open door's exterior handle. "Most of the food I've got is microwaveable, if you're okay with that," the man said, looking in his shopping bag.

"Oh, there is no need," Ms. Kong said. "I have food of my own here."

"Great!" the man said as she closed the door. Then he turned around, smiling at her. "So what are we eating?" Ms. Kong slotted the door chain into the track, looking very fiercely over her shoulder at him.

" _You_." Then her eyes glowed red, like a pair of red lamps had just replaced her eyeballs, crooked smile widening under her face mask. The man's own smile faded as she removed her robe. Then she charged bull-like – the man cried out in shock as she knocked him to the floor under her huge girth. A second later, he screamed in agony as she literally started tearing into him, a spray of blood and bits of gore decorating the wallpaper behind him, followed by another spurt.

* * *

The single-storey motel building stood out by the windows' squares of light in the late twilight. Sitting beside the site's rotted former-outhouse, dressed in his preferred jacket, Dean calmly watched and waited through his binoculars. He'd have preferred being inside a car, even if it wasn't Baby, while doing a stakeout for this long, but it wasn't like a car parked on an empty, undeveloped plain would've been inconspicuous. He never moved his binoculars off the white slight on the building where one window with closed curtains was, except to frequently take a brief look past the building's side for anyone exiting, and he'd probably been sitting here like this for a couple hours. The slit of light in the window he was watching vanished – a few seconds later, the window's curtains were suddenly flung open, the near-naked giantess barely visible in the window.

Dean's face became steely cold behind the binoculars, instantly on full alert – the thing he was now watching had to be the thing from the security footage. Climbing over the window sill with flabby arms and legs, the woman had a square-chinned face that made Dean think of the evil headmistress in _Matilda_ , hair in a tight bun, and nothing on her flabby body but lingerie – the woman reached back into the room, and started dragging a body out by the ankles. Dean raised his eyes from the binoculars. The woman-thing hauled the body over one shoulder like Santa's sack, striding along the motel building's rear side. Dean noted the corpse had a torn-open chest cavity which matched the previous victims. He watched, until the woman-thing had wound round the building's corner towards its front. Then he got out his cellphone.

* * *

Sam had just put his knife and fork down, only a few salad-bits left on his plate, when the female employee wheeling the serving trolley approached his table, removing his crockery.

"You sure you won't be staying for dessert?" she asked, eyes meeting Sam's gaze with _that_ look.

"Um, no thanks," Sam said, smiling broadly back at her – she'd just turned and started wheeling the trolley away when Sam's cellphone started ringing, prompting him to remove it from his jacket and answer. "Yeah?"

" _Monster-momma just left the nest_."

"I'm on my way," Sam said, already getting up from the table.

Less than fifty seconds later, Sam was jogging along the motel building's side towards the building's rear, being careful when he passed an uncovered window. He quickly found and stopped outside the thrown-open window, curtains inside the darkened room billowing in the wind. He spent two seconds peering in, then he grabbed the window's opened pane and climbed in. Dropping on the floor, the tangy smell in the air hit Sam like a wrecking ball – _death and blood_ , so intense it was as if half-a-dozen bodies had been piled and left to rot. Turning his head, Sam extracted and activated a flashlight, holding it in an overarm pose. Slowly tracking the flashlight to briefly banish the darkness, Sam saw blood and bits of gore splattered on the wallpaper, above a puddle of more of the stuff. He sighed easily through his nostrils – this was far from the grizzliest thing he'd ever seen, but that didn't mean he thought it should be so easy to see it.

Sam slowly navigated around the room, careful to avoid stepping in blood. The end of the room he was at looked rather unlived-in, with no extra belongings beyond the couch, table and chairs. He noted the kitchenette didn't have more than one stray streak of blood on it, looking like it hadn't been used recently. He slowly advanced closer to the back of the motel suite. He scanned his flashlight's beam around, halting it at the two or three figurines that were resting on the bedside table or on the small table across from the bed – tabletop indoor water fountains, including a bamboo tap fountain. Looking at the bed, Sam saw the top sheets were tossed back, and the mattress-sheet underneath was wrinkled – it had been used.

Opening the bedside desk's drawer, Sam didn't find more than a couple magazines, one of them with a spring on the front cover and something about it being in Japan – so he went to the wardrobe next to the bedside desk.

* * *

The shovel-blade scraped through earth. It tossed another mound atop the bloodied corpse, lying in a mangled-looking posture at the bottom of the pit, the vehicle's headlamps above the pit's top casting yellow lines on the slick, skinless edges. Po Kong grunted very-slightly, shovelling a mound of earth every two seconds using her chubby arms – not only was her size decreased in human form, but her demon strength was also lessened, though it remained far above any mortal's. Furthermore, her appetite seemed slightly harder to ignore, making her feel peckish more regularly and intensely – such was the price of being in a universe that had no chi in its base fabrics, apparently. Consequently needing to harness her own chi to cast the hypnotic spell on the face-cream she'd worn, surely didn't help with the ill-effects either. Po Kong knew she'd need a new energy source eventually since she didn't have her own universe's fundamental energies to prevent her starving away to nothing. Food without chi in it couldn't fuel her much, only please her tastebuds, though being able to taste was for now a great comfort to the gluttonous demoness, with all the stress she was enduring.

With Po Kong's strength, soon the grave was a near-flat patch in the headlamps' yellow light – she turned from the patch right away, not bothering to smooth it over with the arid location she was in. She threw the long-handled shovel forward into the pickup truck's cargo bed, before opening the driver's door and squeezing in. One noisy shift of the gear-stick, and the truck began rolling backwards.

* * *

Sat in the Gremlin's driver's seat, Dean patiently watched the parking lot for any activity, face straight. Then he saw the pickup with the slightly-yellowed headlights rolling forward diagonally along the highway some distance away, turning and pulling into the motel's streetlamp-lit parking lot.

"Crap," Dean whispered quietly.

* * *

Sam opened the refrigerator door, the light inside coming on to reveal large red chunks, and a dark liver and pile of intestines, stacked on plates on each shelf. He turned his head away with a sickened groan, then swung the refrigerator door shut before the stench could hit him full-force. He hadn't had a chance to look elsewhere when his cellphone started buzzing in his jeans, the slight sound filling the room's air – he quickly removed the phone and flipped it open, putting it to his ear.

"Dean?"

" _She's back. Get out of there._ " His brother's voice was quick and serious – Sam didn't wait longer than one second before hanging up, already turning his head to the window. He all but ran to it, stopping short of the windowsill to lean his head out slightly – he looked left and right towards, then quickly climbed out. He didn't know which way she'd be coming, if she'd re-enter her room the same way she'd left, so he quickly picked walking in a quick stride towards the corner on his right. He shoved his hands in his jacket's pockets in case she came round either corner and saw him, keeping his eyes on the wall-corner he was heading towards. Sam hadn't quick-strode past more than three windows before he turned his head very-slightly, looking behind his shoulder. Just in time to see the tip of the shadow crawling past the building corner he'd left behind. Sam had 1.5 seconds to decide, eyes shifting to the wall he was passing – moving fast, he launched himself into an open, lit window, legs and lower-torso vanishing inside just before the huge women would've been within eyesight.

Sam quietly shut the window behind himself, before a feminine scream made him spin. A man and woman were lying in the bed, bedside lamps on, chests on display and hidden with the bedsheet respectively.

"…Hi," was all Sam could nervously say after an awkward second. "New sport, from… New Jersey." The couple's expressions didn't calm, and Sam's awkward feeling rapidly multiplied. "I'll be on my way," he said quickly, half-striding, half-jogging to the suite's door.

* * *

"She had nature-themed home water-fountains by her bed?" Dean said as he pulled the Gremlin out of the motel parking lot.

"And magazines about streams," Sam said in the passenger's seat, looking at their dad's open journal. "Fits the lore about korrigans liking streams."

Neither brother saw the ghost in the backseat's centre roll his eyes in an obvious manner, nor heard him as they continued talking. "Korrigans don't nest in these parts anymore. Eve made sure of that!"

"Uh-huh."

"Says here the way to kill a korrigan is to-"

"-is with an iron blade dipped in the blood of its victims. Same as a siren."

"Okay, looks like we've got to make a stop at the morgue when it opens," Sam said.

"Did the bed in the room look used to you?" Dean asked.

"Yeah, why?" Sam said, looking up at him.

"Maybe we can kill the monster while it's sleeping for once," Dean suggested, eyes on the road. "Save us a bunch of getting-our-asses-kicked."

"So, you… _don't_ want to take the thing out with guns blazing?" Sam asked bemusedly.

"No, I just think we could save ourselves the extra bruises and having to mend our bones every time we hunt a monster," Dean clarified, not smiling. "That's all." Sam's eyes shifted sideways, then he raised his eyebrows and slightly pouted his lip in thought.

"I guess."

* * *

The next morning, Sam and Dean left the morgue with a jar of the blood they needed. At dusk they returned to the James Brown Motel, when the sky was turning dark-blue.

The brothers snuck around the motel's rear side, crouching below windowsill-level as they approached the cannibal-woman's window. The curtains were drawn but slightly ajar, letting Sam try and peer through their three-inch thick gap. The room was dimly-lit by a single floor-lamp – not far from the window, the giant woman was sitting at one of the chairs wearing nothing but lingerie and a white robe, hair in a tight bun – she was stuffing her face with a plateful of raw meat, bare-handed, blood on her face and flabby chest. Sam quickly ducked his head out of sight, looking at Dean and putting a finger near his lips for silence – then they hurriedly crept away, Dean careful to avoid crossing inside the window's line of sight.

The brothers waited by the corner, the slit of light emanating from the cannibal-woman's window as it got darker. After about forty-five minutes, the light-slit blinked off, at which point Sam and Dean shared a look. They waited about three minutes before moving forward. Sam crouched and peered through the curtains' gap again – in the shadowed room, he saw the giant woman lying on her side atop the bed in nothing but lingerie; no sheets covering her wide, flabby torso, feet's pudgy soles facing the window, fat chest slightly shifting in a snoring rhythm. Turning to Dean crouched on his left, Sam nodded his head – Dean gave him an acknowledging look, then rose and began forcing the open window-pane to open wider. Dean vaulted his legs over the windowsill, then quietly slid all the way in. Sam put one leg and then the other on the windowsill, before carefully lowering one foot at a time to the inside floor – Dean was already removing his bloody-tipped knife from his inside jacket pocket.

As they stalked towards the bed, Sam behind Dean, Sam saw the blood and gore from last night had been completely cleaned, though the smell was still thick in the air. Sam couldn't help feeling oddly like he and Dean were in a spy movie, as they took adjacent places around the giant woman's bed – Dean at the side which her front was facing, Sam at the bed's bottom-corner – the woman's snoring like a purring cat's. Removing his own knife, Sam looked at Dean – the older brother nodded; a tense second; then they struck. Plunging both blades handle-deep in fatty flesh. The woman's dark-brown eyes shot open, a surprised cry escaping her. She shot up into a sitting position with surprising speed, Sam and Dean withdrawing their knives and being forced backwards. The woman looked at her two red stab-wounds, then at the two intruders – her shocked, blood-stained face suddenly contorted with rage, eyeballs glowing neon-red in her skull. Bellowing, the fat woman jumped up and charged, small arm's fist raised. Dean sidestepped, the woman's fisted forearm going through the wall behind him. And out into the hallway.

Yelling, the fat woman swung her other arm in a backhand. It struck Dean across the jaw and sent him flying. The fridge nearly toppled sideways under Dean's impact, door coming off its hinges – the elder hunter brother was instantly down. Arm free of the wall, the woman charged at Sam. She was coming too fast, so he swung his knife-wielding arm like a punch, blade aimed at her face. She halted his strike by grabbing his wrist – Sam raised his other arm, which she grabbed the same way, a split-second before she turned and slammed him into the wall opposite the bed, his feet dangling a foot above the floor. Sam had barely one second to grit his teeth before the woman shifted one hand to his throat, vice-like grip instantly crushing his windpipe, making him wheeze for air.

"How _rude_!" Sam heard a gruff voice exclaim, tone vaguely sounding a bit too pleasant. The fat woman's outline in his vision was blurred. She shifted, reaching her other hand towards Sam's side – he saw out of one eye's undefined corner her hand was at the table right of his legs, dipping her fingers in some substance. After a moment, the woman's free hand was quickly painting her face somewhat. The grip on Sam's throat eased, and he gasped. "Coming into a girl's room uninvited, not telling her what it is you're doing here." Sam's vision quickly refocused, revealing the fat woman's new, crude face-cream mask which for a moment glowed green with magic, the big crooked lips smiling. At the woman's pleasantness, Sam's expectations of hostility began evaporating – he and Dean had broken into her room and _stabbed_ her, yet compared to most things they killed, here she was being as forgiving about the matter as anything; it made the tension in Sam's muscles slightly lessen despite the grip on his throat. "You _must_ make this up to me, by telling me all about what's going on here. Then, we can make peace over dinner."

_BLAM!_

Light flashed, and the woman barely winced – she turned her head. At the refrigerator, Dean was conscious if cloudy-eyed, one arm straight and holding a handgun. In one second, Sam removed his handgun from his jacket and fired a shot at her head. In the split-second light exploded directly beside her ear, the fat woman staggered sideways with a cry, while still holding Sam. Yelling furiously, she spun her body, throwing Sam towards the window-wall – he flew like Dean had, smashing into the wall and hitting the floor. The woman ran sideways on her pudgy legs, kicking Dean's gun out of his hand, then slamming a foot's sole into his face – Dean was instantly downed, making Sam absurdly think of the killing blow in a _Rocky_ movie. Sam would've tried drawing her attention again. But she suddenly grabbed either side of the fridge, and _ripped it off the floor_ , electrical cord trailing. The woman held the fridge above her head two-handed, plates and bloody gore spilling and splattering from the earthward-facing door. Then she threw it. Sam leapt sideways, a split-second before it completely smashed through the window. Hearing the woman roar, Sam looked again. She was charging straight at him, huge body leaning forward, half-a-mouth wide open. Sam reacted immediately, all but scrabbling out the window.

He'd barely jumped onto the ground when the woman-thing suddenly ran through the wall behind him like something out of a cartoon, gore-slick front slamming into Sam's back, fat arms grabbing him – the woman ran so fast she stumbled and fell sideways, bulbous torso's side taking the impact. Whipping his head around, Sam saw her open half-a-mouth was less than a foot diagonally away from his head, eyes glowing again. He saw his handgun lying a foot from his head, opposite the woman's – he grabbed it one-handed, swung the arm and fired, the woman's head snapped backwards from the chin-shot, and Sam immediately tore free of her arms, her strength seemingly stunned.

Coming to in the motel room, Dean forced himself to begin sitting up, driven by urgent need – as feeling began returning, he was aware of something slick and wet on him, before his vision cleared enough that he saw the cold gore and blood decorating his body, making his clothe stick to his skin.

" _Ugh_!" Dean growled through his teeth, suddenly gaining enough mental clarity to make his eyes roll without being sick.

" _Dean_!" he heard Sam's voice yell, making him look towards the window's wall. In the plain outside, Sam was running left and right, zigzagging – chasing him for every zigzag without closing much distance was the fat woman-monster, flabby flesh half-covered in red gore which stained her white undergarments, wide-girthed torso leaning forward with arms outstretched like the _Looney Tunes_ coyote.

" _Urgh_ ," Dean groaned not-fully-seriously at his brother's predicament, eyebrows rising slightly at the bizarre sight.

" _Come back here, you_!" the fat woman bellowed, following Sam's every zigzag. Half-turning his torso, Sam fired another bullet. It pierced flesh on her kneecap but then bounced away, like it had struck titanium under the muscle – the woman halted at the strike, then chuckled gruffly at Sam with an ugly-toothed grin. Before Sam could run to the side, she jumped and lunged like a lion, tackling Sam. Her body crushed Sam's body below his shoulder. When she picked herself up slightly, Sam gasped in air, at the same time he swung his gun's butt-end at her face. It smashed into her teeth, but no blood flew as her head snapped sideways. The fat woman groaned, seemingly stunned, and Sam immediately began crawling out from under her – he slid his legs out as she began to turn her head back, and was turning and getting back on his feet when she grabbed his ankle, jerking him hard enough to throw him chest-first to the earth. Looking back, Sam saw the woman's groan as she crawled over his lower-legs, ready to bite.

_BLAM!_

"Huh?!" The woman stopped.

" _HEY_!" She turned her head at the same time Sam looked past her massive shoulders, both seeing Dean standing outside, gun raised. "You want some nice red meat, bitch?! _TRY ME_!" He fired another shot, which went in and out the woman's huge shoulder – bellowing, she turned on Dean and left Sam. But she unexpectedly halted mid-charge towards Dean, gasping slightly as if she'd just sensed something invisible. Sam kept his wide eyes on the fat woman's back in puzzlement. Sam registered the sound at about the same time the woman turned her head, prompting the long-haired hunter to follow her gaze.

" _Yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ , _yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ , _yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ …"

Twenty-five feet across the plain behind the motel, people – either five of them, or four including a really large figure like the woman – were walking forward and chanting in unison, silhouetted by the gloom. Mid-chant, something suddenly glowed bright-green in the central figure's grasp, revealing the goat-like face of an old Asian man, while the two younger figures on either sides entered combat stances.

" _YOU_?!" the fat woman-thing all but shrieked in astonishment, human-looing dark-brown eyes wide. After a pause, her face contorted with rage and she charged, ignoring Sam altogether. She didn't run far before her pudgy feet suddenly left the ground. Then slammed back into it in front of the new arrivals, hard enough that her feet below the ankles sunk through the earth.

_BOOM!_

The noise exploded in the air like there'd been a gas explosion, and the ground vibrated violently around and beneath Sam – the nearby motel shuddered, lights flickering, while Dean struggled to stay standing through the earthquake. In front of the woman-thing's feet, giant slabs of earth rose as the ground cracked and broke. One of the younger two of the four strangers yelped as he fell into the splitting earth up to his waist. A moment later, the old man fell all the way in, an uplift rising in Sam's line of vision to block him from sight. The remaining figures jumped and hopped between moving slabs, the largest figure keeping only one foot at a time on the earth. The rumble in the air began lessening, and the ground's shaking quickly started dying.

"You will be my _ultimate main course_!" the fat woman bellowed furiously, brown eyes flashing glowing-red again, before she charged. She fluidly hopped and stomped over the mess of uplifted earth like a trained athlete. The gigantic-sized stranger charged at her, and their hands locked as they met, faces inches apart, fists shaking with their opposing strengths. Suddenly, the woman shifted slightly sideways, swinging and throwing the large man by his two hands. He yelled, crashing straight through the motel building's wall.

" _YAAAGH_!" The fat woman turned her head, a split-second before the scrawny woman's flying kick made contact with her face. It not only made the woman-thing's head snap backwards. It amazingly made the rest of her body fly three feet backwards with her head. She crashed on her back among the damaged earth, while the kicking woman landed in a fluid crouch. Sam hurriedly picked himself up off the earth, staring. He briefly turned his head, seeing Dean standing and holding his handgun in a low-ready position – his brother exchanged a brief look with him.

Quickly recovering, the fat woman charged towards the smaller woman, arm raised claw-like, but the woman didn't see her coming in time. Sam fired his gun immediately. He didn't see if the bullet went into the fat woman's skull, but her head jerked sideways from the impact. And she lost her balance, one chubby leg fully leaving the ground before she staggered sideways, barely stopping herself short of running over an uplift slab' precipice. The fat woman whirled her glowing glare back on Sam and Dean, while smaller woman kept her attention on the enemy.

"Tohru! _Catch_!" The scrawny old man yelled, arms and upper-torso now poking above the earth he'd fallen into – he threw the green-glowing object one-handed. The gigantic stranger ran forward from the motel wall, catching the object in both hands and stopping. Sam made out his overalls, and a bespectacled head with topknot hair.

" _Yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ , _yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ …" the giant man chanted much quicker than the old man had, pointing the glowing object gun-like. The fat woman cried a horrid sound, eyes widening as she looked at the giant man. The sweatshirt-clad Asian man who'd been half-buried, hands on the uplifted earth around him, hoisted his lower-body free. Not noticing, the fat woman yelled and charged at the big man. As she horizontally passed the sweatshirt-man, he leapt and performed a flying kick, knocking her clean out of her course – he immediately lowered and performed a spinning kick, bringing the fat woman's leg out from under her and causing her to fall.

" _Yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ , _yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ , _yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ …" The green glow on the large man's object increased, and it began crackling with wisps of bright-green, misty energy, a supernatural wind seeming to blow at the huge man's grey-and-white overalls. Sam watched in amazement. A bright-green lightning bolt suddenly shot from his glowing object. And struck the fat woman in the centre of her chest. Then a vortex of glowing green smoke rapidly emerged from the object, twisting around and following the lightning-bolt's path, rapidly gaining speed. In a few seconds, the vortex reached the woman's chest, its first wisps building around and ensnaring her, the vortex and lightning-bolt casting the plain in green light.

" _NOOOOOOOO_!" the fat woman bellowed as the vortex's wisps began swirling around her face – the sound died as the vortex wholly cocooned her under a green-glowing storm; then with a flash, whatever mass was hidden under the vortex-cocoon seemed to disintegrate, the vortex's cocoon end shrinking as it rapidly retreated back towards the object. The green light vanished as the vortex wholly shot back into its source, leaving a dull-bronze lamp in the big man's hand. On the plain, the sweatshirt-man was helping the old man out of the earth – two seconds after getting on his feet, the skinny old Asian man whipped a hand by the sweatshirt-man's forehead.

" _Ow_!"

"That is for letting the Mountain Demon half-bury you alive!" the old man shrieked at the sweatshirt-man, wagging a finger - his accent definitely wasn't American. "Do you _want_ the demons to grind us all into black pepper?!" While the old man yelled, the scrawny woman turned her head towards Sam and Dean, short jet-black hair flashing before Sam saw her heart-shaped face, with honey-brown eyes under pencil-thin eyebrows.

"Thanks for the save!" She gave a thumbs-up and a smile.

"Don't mention it!" Sam called back, his gun held in a low-ready position – his guard was lowering, but it wouldn't lower all the way until he'd seen these strangers fight something he was familiar with or do the full salt, silver and borax monster-test. He briefly thought, perhaps watching out for Leviathan for several months had gotten to him.

"Nice light show," Dean said, walking over. Sam detected the very-slight guard in his tone. "What the hell was that thing anyway?"

"You said _demon_?" Sam asked, looking from Dean back to the scrawny woman.

"Who are you, and why do you have those guns at a motel?" The sweatshirt-clad man marched over past the woman's shoulders, square-jawed face distrustful as he looked at the two men.

"We're hunter-" Dean's voice trailed off as he and Sam got a good look at the sweatshirt-man. He had a round nose and thick eyebrows, and long, wavy hair, looking to probably be in his forties, and he was of Asian ethnicity like his three companions – Sam was vaguely aware that he and Dean were gawking.

"Holy fu-"


	9. We Have a New Enemy

“Please, before you ask for an autograph, I am _not_ who you think I am,” Jackie sighed, trying to be diplomatic, though his eyebrows remained firm as he refused to lower his guard until these two men explained their guns.

“Really? Your first name is Jackie and your last name is Chan.” Jade said wryly, smirking and crossing her arms – Jackie groaned. The gunman with the shorter brown hair was removing his cellphone and holding it up. Jackie looked at the phone’s camera lens, eyebrows raised in puzzlement, then retuned his firm eyes to the short-haired man’s head. The taller man with the long hair, seeming to feel awkward about this tension, looked from his friend back to Jackie and Jade; gun at his side.

“We’re hunters,” he said. “It’s okay.”

Jackie and Jade’s only response was to trade quizzical looks with each-other before Jade spoke to the gunmen again. “So does… that mean you’re secret agents or something?”

“Uh, it means we hunt things, like you do,” the tall man replied, brows slightly furrowing in confusion.

“Demons, vampires, things your worst nightmares would run from,” the short-haired man said bluntly, his face less placating as he gave a distrustful near-glare of his own. Jackie’s wariness decreased at the idea these men fought demons. “Who the hell are you, and why is my cell showing me this?” While calmly speaking, he held up his opened cellphone to let Jackie and Jade see the screen – a camera app’s viewfinder, half-filled by two bright-green blotches shaped like a pair of heads and shoulders. The tall, long-haired man craned his neck slightly to see the image, and his face shifted when he saw it before looking back at the Chans.

“Guess that’s happens when someone’s chi gets caught on video in another universe,” Jade murmured after a moment gawking. “You guys know about demons and monsters? That’s great, because me and my uncle are all about handing their rears to them. My name’s Jade Chan-” She gestured with a hand to her chest. “-and this is my uncle Jackie. Not the movie star, unfortunately.” She couldn’t help putting in with a mischievous tone. “Long story short, we’re from an alternate universe, and we hopped over to your world because demons from our territory got over here.”

The tall man shared a sidelong glance with his partner. “Okay…”

“Please, there is no need for guns,” Jackie said, trying to be placating as he raised both palms. Somewhat slowly, the tall man put his handgun away inside his jacket, then looked at his partner – after a second, the rugged-featured other man followed his example.

“So, mountain demon?” the short-haired gunman said, smiling in a way that didn’t reach his eyes, though his body language was slightly more relaxed. “That’s a new thing on me.” _Whack._ ” _Agh_!”

“Hm,” Uncle snorted, nose held high – Jackie hadn’t noticed him and Tohru approaching the shorter-haired man’s side. “You are a _VERY poor keeper of peace_!”

Both the brown-haired men looked at Uncle incredulously, one holding a hand to his forehead and glaring. “Yeah, well _you’re_ a poor, uh… talker!” _Whack._ ” _Argh_!”

“ _One_ more thing. _Respect your ELDERS_!”

“There is no need for arguing between us,” Tohru said diplomatically, seemingly sharing Jackie’s mounting concerns about a squabble breaking out as the large sumo put a large hand on Uncle’s shoulder.

“You’ve met Uncle,” Jade murmured. “And the big guy here is Tohru.” The giant bespectacled man, who’d been looking neutrally at the two men, bowed slightly. Not a second later, the distant wail of a siren reached Jackie’s ear, making him turn his head.

“How about we continue this someplace where we’re less suspicious?” the taller gunman said, hazel eyes looking about.

One look at the damaged motel was all Jackie and Jade needed before Jackie replied, “Good idea.”

A minute later, the six of them were walking casually together around the motel’s side, to the front parking lot. Several people were gathered about the lot – some were perfectly standing with cellphones by their ears, some were sat on cars’ hoods, some were sitting on the tarmac with bloodied heads while able motel-staff tended to them. The motel’s lobby entrance had collapsed, the roof diagonally-aligned with one corner touching the ground, leaving a triangular opening below the other corner.

“We should help while we’re here,” Tohru said, face and deep voice firm. As if on cue, a wailing ambulance pulled in off the highway.

“The paramedics will take care of it, Tohru,” Jackie reassured the sumo calmly – Tohru nodded, a second before the sumo’s stomach growled loudly, to both men’s surprise.

“Tohru,” Uncle’s voice said loudly – he was approaching with the supplies-filled rucksack that Jackie had left somewhere when they’d arrived, holding a plastic-wrapped mung bean sandwich. “Chi-less alternate reality food will only provide _half_ the sustenance. Take this.” The two gunmen craned their heads slightly to see, the tall one’s eyes narrowing slightly.

“Thank you, Uncle,” Tohru said – as the sumo took the sandwich, Jackie was surprised to see the food glow chi-green, the glow fading as Tohru unwrapped it.

“So, are you gonna tell us your names or do I need to come up with nicknames?” Jade asked the gunmen jokingly, making Jackie look back over his shoulder.

The taller gunman seemed amused by Jade’s comment as he momentarily struggled to speak. “I’m Sam Winchester. This is my brother, Dean.”

“You are familiar with magic?” Uncle asked with interest, shuffling forward at his slow pace.

“Like we said, monster-hunters,” the short-haired man, Dean, replied. “Why?”

“Because eight other demon-sorcerers besides the Mountain Demon remain at large in your universe,” Tohru said after swallowing half his sandwich. “We can imprison them inside this lamp once we have found them all-” He held up the dull-bronze lamp in his free palm. “-but we need to know if there are any other threats like Lucifer in your world.”

The Winchester men’s faces immediately shifted – Sam’s jaw became gear-tight, though something pinched his eyes and brows which made him look awful, while Dean’s face immediately became seriously-interested before he spoke very-levelly. “What do you know about Lucifer?”

“It was him who let the demons out,” Jackie said, stepping forward behind Uncle.

“Brown hair, white angel-wings, quippy tongue,” Jade murmured, looking uncertainly as she too had noticed the brothers’ shift in mood. Sam turned his head and looked at Dean silently, in a terrible sort of way.

* * *

The LTD Country Squire that Sam and Dean had exchanged the Gremlin for – a rental rather than stolen – rode alone down the remote backroad, headlights banishing the dark from its path.

Sitting between two figures, eyes slightly wide, the grizzly-bearded ghost of Bobby Singer voiced his thoughts on this whole new damned situation: “Well, this is a new one, even for all the weird I’ve seen in five years.” Uncle and Jade were sitting on either side of the invisible spirit, while Tohru – sat hunched over on one of the side-aligned rearmost seats opposite the Bizarro-World alternate Jackie, the huge sumo filling half the space – was finishing his explanation of the Chans’ fight in their own universe.

“After Uncle confirmed that Lucifer and the nine demons had vanished from the Nether-realm, we used magic to open an offshoot of the rift, which brought us to Oregon in your world.” At the front passenger seat, Sam’s breathing was slow and steady yet his lungs felt somehow constricted, his face with its slightly-ajar lips calm save that his eyes were slightly wide and brows sloping with anxiety; while Dean was apparently going into his damned emotion-shutdown that he needed to keep it together.

“But you didn’t hear anything from Lucifer or those demon-sorcerers about how the rift opened?” Sam asked. “They didn’t mention anything about if it was them or something else?”

“Uncle and fellow chi-wizard could only speculate,” Uncle said, raising his skinny arms in a shrug. “If the rift was opened from demon-sorcerers’ side, it would have taken _very_ powerful magic.”

“How big a problem is Lucifer in your world?”

Dean answered Jade’s question; “The last time he was topside it was the Apocalypse, with a capital-A. We sent his ass back to Hell two years ago, thought that was the end of it.”

“Guess he got a sequel,” Bobby bitterly lamented.

“Lucifer is normally kept in a Cage, like Hell’s hotbox – nothing can get in or out,” Sam explained, mouth and tongue seeming to move on autopilot. “If he busted the Cage, we’ve gotta know how.”

Sam heard Jade make a thoughtful _Hm_ sound. “The spacetime rift on our side opened in the Netherworld. Maybe on this side it opened inside Lucifer’s cell?”

“Maybe,” Sam murmured. “But we need to know for sure.”

“What are you thinking?” Dean murmured.

A pause followed before Sam spoke. “Crowley.”

“ _That’s_ your Plan A?” Dean said incredulously, looking over at Sam, emotions threatening to break.

Bobby was with Dean on that one, eyebrows shooting up as he growled, “Yikes, boy.”

“He’s the King of Hell,” Sam said. “Don’t you think if Lucifer flew the coop, he’d be one of the first ones to know?”

“He already has it out for the Big-Mouths,” Dean argued. Had Sam turned his head, he would’ve seen Jade turn to Uncle with a bemused look while Dean continued speaking; “What if he decides Chompers and the Devil in the fighting ring is killing two birds with one stone?”

“Fine, then what else we got?!” Sam asked.

A brief pause, before Dean said, “The angels.”

Sam rolled his eyes, shifting in his seat. “Right, because they’ve always been on the don’t-end-the-world train with Lucifer.”

“From what I heard at the hospital, it sounded like every angel who voted Apocalypse Two is dead,” Dean said. “Raphael’s been dusted, Michael is in the hole-”

“Last time we checked,” Sam said pointedly.

“Aren’t angels supposed to be the good guys?” Jackie asked Tohru rhetorically.

“In this world, it seems not.”

“Do we have a Plan C?”

“Do we have a Plan C?” Dean echoed Bobby’s words, looking at Sam. Sam was stuck on an answer for one second.

“There is a third option,” Uncle murmured thoughtfully, index finger raised.

“What?” Sam and Dean asked at the exact same time, both looking behind their seat at him.

“Firstly… _KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD_!” Uncle suddenly shrieked – Sam wanted to wince, while Dean half-turned with an arm raised on reflex, slowly bringing the arm back towards the wheel with a growl. “ _Do you want Uncle and his family turned into human hamburger_?!”

“Uncle, to be fair, you do not criticise my driving. You have even leaned out of a moving vehicle’s window on more than one occasion!”

“Uncle does not criticise _your_ driving because Uncle trusts you with a moving vehicle! Uncle does not know rude man’s driving skills – could have seventeen crashed cars to his name for all Uncle knows!” Sam could see Dean’s knuckles protruding as he gripped the wheel tighter, muscles in his face tensing.

“He has his moments,” Bobby growled casually.

“But that time you leaned out of a taxi-!”

“Fate of world was at stake. Uncle sees no dragons threatening to absorb demon-chi if rude man _drives safely_!”

“Uh, the third option you mentioned?” Sam said quickly.

“The _demon-sorcerers_ ,” Uncle murmured in a hoarse tone, eyes narrowed like a dramatic actor in a kids’ play. “They have crossed to your universe through the same doorway that Lucifer used. They know where it is located on this side. And they can reveal if it is inside Lucifer’s prison – and if so, how did they get out.” Bobby noticed the way the old man said _us_.

“The one you corked at the motel,” Dean said, keeping his eyes on the road, “is there any way we can talk to her?”

“Not without letting her out,” Tohru replied.

“Therefore, we must interrogate one of the other demons before we imprison them,” Uncle said.

“Look, guys, this might not be our world, but it’s still a version of Earth,” Jade said diplomatically, leaning forward into the Squire’s front between the brothers, unknowingly watched by an impressed ghost.

“We must offer to help while we are here,” Jackie inputted – it still seemed slightly surreal to Sam, seeing that action-star face up close speaking with someone else’s voice. Sam glanced sideways at Dean for one second.

“Look, guys, we really appreciate that you want to help out,” Dean said, looking at them in the rear-view mirror, “but tracking eight of your demons – that’s not an overnight job, and me and Sam don’t play well with other hunters for that long.”

“ _Tch_ ,” Jade made a sound, then smirked almost-challengingly as she said; “It’s a good thing we’re not hunters.”

“That’s beside the point,” Dean said. “Besides – Sam?” He turned his head.

“Look, guys; the things me and Dean have had hounding us for months,” Sam said as diplomatically as Jade had been, meeting the Chans’ gazes in the rear-view mirror; “it’s really dangerous to be around us for too long. And frankly, you don’t know what you could be walking into.”

“Worse than Lucifer trying to toy with you and fighting off all-powerful demons at once?” Jade murmured with a smile, raising a pencil-thin eyebrow.

“Well…” Bobby murmured quietly, quite impressed.

Sam snorted a chuckle, grinning before he looked at Dean, who was giving him a relatively-neutral if hard look. “Well, you’ve got me there.”

“We can help you catch one more demon-sorcerer,” Dean said firmly, looking in the rear-view mirror. “After me and Sam get what we need out of the bastard, you can take the car, and we can keep each-other’s phone numbers in case we need help with anything.”

“That is fair enough,” Jackie said, nodding agreeably.

“Okay,” Sam murmured uncertainly – he was used to working in-and-out jobs with other hunters, but teaming up so quickly with a group he’d only just met was awkward verging on against natural instinct.

“Looks like it’s a Marvel team-up,” Dean murmured, cracking a ghost of a smile.

The Ford drove on through the night, tail-lights trailing red behind it in the gloom.


	10. Answers

**Gettysburg, Pennsylvania**

A group of small children cried and shouted, running together before turning off the street between two buildings. The sky was clear and bright, and the two intersecting wide roads had minimal traffic on them, barely more than a row of three vehicles waiting at a red light dead ahead, making the place look with its historical buildings almost like it were a life-size museum model – the woman in the coat smiled sideways at her company as she walked.

“You know, my grandmother used to take me to this town for walks. Her favourite store to go to was that show store I showed you a couple blocks from here. It used to sell antiques, and she said back then, I’d spend nearly the entire day there whenever we came down here.” She paused very-briefly, clearly lost in memories from her eyes. “There’s just so much out there, like these buildings-” She waved a hand at the streets. “-leftover from a bygone age, no matter how much gets paved over, or blown up to make a hotel. There’s always a six-hundred year-old iron from Europe, or a two-hundred year-old tomahawk that’s survived time’s test. What do you think, Mr. Wu?” The short, scrawny Asian man walking with her chuckled, large white teeth showing as his heart-shaped head had an unusually-wide grin, bushy eyebrows mirthful.

“Elizabeth, I told you,” Hsi Wu said - his voice was more hoarse than raspy in his current form, like when he’d disguised himself as a mortal child. “Call me Zeke. I’m already on a first-name basis with you, after all.”

“Of course, Zeke,” she said, smiling and lowering her eyes, like the pavement they were walking on was the most interesting thing in the world. Secretly, Hsi Wu found it half-maddening to be walking on the ground for so long, itching to take to the skies, and he had to scowl slightly to himself when she wasn’t looking – in his current form, Hsi Wu’s jaw was small, and its only remnant of beard-hair was the oval-shaped tuft hanging from his human chin’s dead centre; his jet-black hair stuck up at the very front, but behind that was cleanly slicked-back; and his ears slightly jutted out, with their structure making them look pointed.

“You said your sister in Emmitsburg only sells antiques that are related to magic?” Hsi Wu asked, giving the woman a friendly smile – his mouth was so wide it looked like it barely fitted on his face, while his nose was almost-disproportionately small, though the dark-blue blazer, grey shirt and denim jeans he wore took attention away from the inhuman aspects of his features. “Where does she get them from?”

“All over – she loves finding old stuff in attics, or whenever she’s abroad,” Elizabeth said, smiling at Hsi Wu. “She said she found two sixteenth-century spellbooks while she was in Bavaria.”

“That’ll surely catch someone’s interest,” Hsi Wu said slightly-mischievously as he smiled, suppressing the urge to form a full manic grin. In this chi-less alternate universe, all his former magic knowledge was near-useless, and he could only perform spells by drawing on his bad-chi, which meant he needed to accumulate knowledge on this reality’s magic if he was ever going to establish his new kingdom here. “Do you know anyone else who’s interested in those kinds of antiques?” Hsi Wu asked as they walked on a marked crosswalk.

“Only some, and they know my sister better than they know me,” Elizabeth said.

“Well, I’ll have to meet her,” Hsi Wu said, careful to keep too much glee from entering his tone – he’d already spied this woman’s sister, but he wanted to know where she got her merchandise from and if she had any antiques connections that Hsi Wu could also use. “Perhaps you can introduce me?”

“I was planning to see her this Saturday, when she finishes her shift at the office…” Hsi Wu’s dark-brown human eyes abruptly left the woman, gasping as something tingled his spine the wrong way. Diagonally ahead, a dark-purple Ford Puma shot horizontally by through the crossroads – Hsi Wu felt the chi blazing inside it like heat from a star in space, his eyes _saw_ the ball of chi through the passenger’s side-window, green with a hint of blue demon-chi.

“Zeke?” he heard the woman say while his gaze lingered.

_BEEEP!_

The sudden honk of a car’s horn three feet behind Hsi Wu’s back fully snapped him out of his daze. Turning his head to the car at the crosswalk’s edge that was facing him and Elizabeth (who wasn’t at an angle to see Hsi Wu’s face), the humanised Sky Demon bared his teeth in a fearsome snarl, eyes flashing red, and the car-horn quickly went silent. When Hsi Wu spun on his heel to face Elizabeth again, he had a smile back on and his eyes were human-looking dark-brown.

“Um-It’s been great talking to you, Elizabeth, but I should get going, or I’ll miss the last bus home,” he excused himself quickly. “I’ll see you later.” He waved a hand back at the bemused woman as he turned and walked away. Once his back was facing the woman, Hsi Wu’s face turned dark.

He quickly sought out an alley between two semi-detached storefronts, swerving into it – he’d walked about seven feet into the alley when he threw his blazer off, then grabbed the back of his shirt with two hands. With one tug, the shirt ripped below the collar-rim, then with a shift of muscles and bones, two leathery wings stretched out from his back; much like his true form’s wings, except they had a human skin-colour to match his current form. Eyes glowed red and breath hissed from his open mouth with a feral sound. Flexing leathery membrane gave one lightning-fast flash of movement, and the Sky Demon in human form vanished from the alley.

A shadow as thin as a passing cloud flit over an alley drunk and a cellphone-using pedestrian’s head, only there for a fraction of a second, and disappearing by the time they looked up. Hsi Wu followed the scent of the Puma’s chi-ball – he didn’t have to fly higher to get a view of the car, he could sense the chi now like a bird could sense the Earth’s magnetic field, its signature standing out in this universe’s chi-less expanse of chaotic, alien energies. His glowing red eye narrowed. He watched the ball of chi zigzag between blocks, neutralising the noise and air-gusts his wings would have produced. Hsi Wu’s wings produced a flapping sound, which made a couple gazes shoot up to the sky though they saw nothing, but he neutralised the winds his wings would have produced – as the demon representing Sky, he could manipulate air currents close to his body to help him fly faster, or more quietly, or produce more wind under his wings; which was how he flew so easily in the Netherworld’s windless void. Hsi Wu’s need to avoid being seen diminished as he followed the chi’s aura away from the town, sensing it rolling along a narrow road into a wood on the town’s outskirts where the trees grew thickly. His slightly-thicker shadow shot over the heads of two young humans exchanging saliva in a roofless car. Flying low above the trees, Hsi Wu slowed, the chi-aura slowing, briefly stopping, then moving at a slow pace away from the narrow road that wound through the woodland – he didn’t know where that chi came from, but in this chi-less universe, he was willing to bet one of his siblings or his nephew were involved. Humming thoughtfully in the air, the unseen Sky Demon briefly wondered if his brother’s half-naïve dragon-spawn could be trying to spin rings of wool over his eyes, but dismissed it. Doubting it could’ve been a coincidence that a car with a ball of chi like that had just _passed by_ next to him, Hsi Wu began adjusting his sixth sense’s focus on the chi, narrowing and pulling back – and the single blob of green in his sixth sense’s radar split into _five_ blobs of chi, four of them definitively humanoid! Surprise hit Hsi Wu like a ton of bricks, his mind running through all the possibilities it could conjure – either four demon-sorcerers had somehow accumulated a powerful amount of chi, or… Hsi Wu’s dark-brown eye narrowed against the wind beating his bushy eyebrow’s hair-strands – _this_ would demand caution. He slowly closed in on the ball of bright chi, now able to feel it tingling his skin.

The dark-grey rucksack lay on its own atop a carpet of long-dead leaves, in a slight clearing – an overhead branch creaked and threatened to crack as something perched on it. The site was well away from the road, and only trees would have been visible in all directions to a human eye at ground level. Three feet from the rucksack, a skin-coloured wing membrane suddenly flashed forward at jet-like speed before halting and flexing. Wings retracting and vanishing, Hsi Wu turned his head left and right, then reached forward and picked the rucksack up two-handed – roughly pulling the zipper open, he pulled a slab of the chi’s source out.

“Huh?” He stared in bewilderment at the plastic-wrapped sandwich, emanating chi. Looking back at the rucksack’s opened zipper, the Sky Demon saw a squid tentacle atop more chi-laced sandwiches, shining bright like a beacon – not a second later, his ears perked up.

“ _You really shouldn’t a’ picked that, Chewie_ ,” the beaded, pasty man growled, smiling through his beard.

“ _Yumoguigwaifaidizao_ , _yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …!” Tohru pointed his chi-weapon out from the particularly-large trunk’s hollow he’d been hiding in.

Hsi Wu spun, glowing-eyed face contorted with rage. Tohru’s chi-weapon fired. The torn-shirted Sky Demon sprinted sideways one-tenth-of-a-second before a chi-beam blasted the earth. In the same split-second that a flesh-coloured wing-membrane spread, Sam and Uncle fired green beams from their own stations beside tree-trunks. At the same time Jade and Dean emerged from on Hsi Wu’s opposite flank, with a rope net held between them. Jackie, who’d been sprinting forward, halted, craning his head upwards. Everyone else followed suit, hearing leathery wings beating above their heads, though their eyes never caught a glimpse of the ascending humanoid. Dean was the first to point his petrified opossum skyward, followed by Jade – they heard a wingbeat in one near-vertical direction. And spun, seeing nothing among the white sky and dark tree-branches. Then a whoosh of air on their eight o’clock, sounding like it was flying in a different direction. Jackie immediately began climbing a tree, hopping one-footed from one branch to a higher one on which he planted his other foot, like they were stepping stones, rapidly gaining height.

Jackie grabbed a branch above his head and performed a pull-up, crouching atop it and looking around, before he shouted down to the others, “I can’t see him!”

“ _Uncle cannot hear you_!” Uncle called back, head craned.

“ _I said I can’t_ -!” Speed-blurred arms grabbed Jackie’s shoulders as they shot by, swiping him off his perch. Teeth grit, Uncle and Tohru immediately began firing upwards half-blindly. As did Jade, then Sam and Dean. Trying to follow the circling path of Jackie’s scream among the trees.

“ _Ai y_ -!” Seeing it incoming, Tohru moved to save Uncle too late, before Jackie crashed into the old man.

Jackie was lying on his back, looking dazed, Uncle’s hair and one forearm poking out behind his shoulders – the older chi-wizard’s muffled voice shrieked out; “ _JACKIE_! _Demon-fighting is NOT naptime_!”

Watching Tohru lift Jackie off of Uncle, Sam and Dean immediately returned their gazes and chi-weapons to the sky. Followed by Jade.

“Where the hell is he?!” Dean growled – not a second later, a wingbeat made him spin thirty degrees anticlockwise. To see nothing in the trees. The three slowly circled on their respective spots, gazes trained upward – they heard another wingbeat in another direction. But saw nothing except trees and sky. The wingbeat-noise sounded again as they kept scanning. Then again. A pause passed and they continued slowly circling and looking. The overcast white sky and trees spun dizzyingly. The crack of twigs and wood snapping. The rustle of another wingbeat, shooting in a diagonal direction, though gazes caught no glimpse of its source.

“ _Peekaboo_!” Hsi Wu said directly behind Dean’s head. Dean spun with a knife upon the human demon who was hanging upside-down like a human bat – Hsi Wu deflected Dean’s strike with a forearm, other hand seizing Dean’s throat a split-second later.

The hunter and Sky Demon almost-immediately shot vertically-upwards, Dean yelling as his boots left the ground, while Sam and Jade ran forward. “ _Dean_!”

Jade jumped a second behind Sam, grabbing onto Dean’s other leg before he would’ve been out of reach – the ascent slowed with their weight but didn’t entirely stop, Sam and Jade’s legs kicking above the ground while Hsi Wu audibly grunted. Jackie sprinted forward, leaping off a fallen branch’s raised curve and grabbing onto the same leg as Sam. Gust-like winds suddenly blew down on the clearing. Tohru raised a huge arm in front of his face as leaves and twigs were blown about, while the wind threatened to lift Uncle’s shirt.

“ _Ai ya_!”

Breaking his protective posture, Tohru fired with his chi-weapon – no effect. Grunting and wriggling, skyward-craned head level with tree-branches, Dean fired the chi-weapon in his free hand – Hsi Wu’s voice only snickered over his wingbeats’ noise. Then Dean suddenly bit into the forearm holding his shoulder, earning a pained cry. Dean, Jade and Sam dropped like rocks a second later. Dean landing atop the other two. Tohru yelled, earth thundering as he ran forward, firing a stream of chi-blasts. Dean looked up, seeing no sign of the demon-sorcerer. Only the sounds of wingbeats and rustling branches which marked his passing.

“Son of a bitch!” Dean grunted as he picked himself up. Sam and Jade followed – the trio heard something hiss ferally. Dean glimpsed a branch shaking in the same half-a-second his gaze tracked another wingbeat’s noise. Sam and Jade re-raised their chi-weapons. But Dean thought they needed a new strategy to bring this winged freak down. Another wing-rustle in the trees. Another whoosh a-hundred-and-twenty degrees anticlockwise. Sam’s eyes were flitting with Roadrunner-like speed. Dean’s eyes continued flitting as the wingbeats and missed rustles continued – the sounds were getting more frequent, meaning Hsi Wu was toying with them. Jade growled in frustration.

Sam turned his head and closed his eyes-

_PCHOW!_

-and Hsi Wu’s hoarse voice cried out in pain. A series of thumps and branches cracking or breaking followed, the interim between most of the sounds so brief they almost formed a cacophony – after two seconds, a body fell to earth seven feet in front of Dean, Sam and Jade, green smoke poured off his half-naked torso.

“ _Jade_!” Three heads turned to Uncle, who pointed with a skinny arm as he yelled; “You must seize Hsi Wu using the net!” Sam, Dean and Jade rather-promptly ran across the clearing, quickly gathering up the rope net between them – then they ran back, Dean and Jade holding the front two edges while Sam held the rear. They threw the net atop the downed man-thing, and the rope immediately began glowing bright-green – Hsi Wu groaned, eyes opening and glowing red. Sam planted a boot atop the demon-sorcerer and rolled him over, the net rolling with him to wrap around his body’s circumference. Dean and Jade pulled the net’s opposite two edges towards themselves from under Hsi Wu, holding the net closed by four edges – recovering, Hsi Wu began grunting and wriggling furiously inside the net, hissing like a snake.

“Let’s see you cut your way out of this, you son-of-a-bitch,” Dean said coldly, lip slightly curled. _Whack._ ” _Ah_!”

“Do not swear where Uncle can hear you!” The old Chinese man, who Dean hadn’t seen approach him, glared disapprovingly. Dean just looked at him and sighed slightly, hand still on his forehead – Sam snorted in amusement on Dean’s other side, making the older brother shoot him a glare.

“What happens to bird-boy?” Jade questioned, looking down at Hsi Wu. Who scowled and glared out of the net at her.

“We must take Hsi Wu to a place where his magic can be permanently bound while he is questioned,” Uncle said, a hand on his chin, before Dean spoke.

“Why not ask him right now and cram the evil genie in the bottle?”

“Sky Demon Hsi Wu is _very crafty_ ,” Uncle murmured slowly in an ominous tone, leaning forward and bringing his face close to Dean’s, wagging a finger below their noses. “Uncle and fellow chi-wizard need a _very_ secure place.” He held his chin with one hand in thought. A pause passed, in which Hsi Wu continued glaring through the net at the old and young two men. “ _What are you waiting for_?!” Uncle suddenly shrieked quite-loudly in Dean’s face, making the hunter cringe away slightly – Dean didn’t snap back, turning and beginning to gather the hooped ropes up along with Sam, though he quietly mumbled not-nice things under his breath, while Jade and Jackie came over to help. In a few seconds, they were dragging the netted man-like thing across the leaf-coated floor, out of the clearing.

They were back at the Puma Sam and Dean had rented in less than two minutes, cramming Hsi Wu into the cramped trunk, net and all – the Sky Demon glared unreadably out at them. Then a cold-faced Dean shut the lid.

* * *

The drive from Pennsylvania to New York state took up most of the evening, the Puma shooting along the road, the County Squire directly behind it. It was dark by the time they arrived at their destination, the ‘CASTLE STORAGE’ neon-light and the steel overhang’s lights providing illumination as Dean unlocked the metal door.

Pulling the sliding door open with a metallic sound, Dean rather-quickly entered the garage-like storage space at the front, unfazed by the musty air as he went to flick on the overhead lights. Jade, Sam and Uncle entered next, with Tohru at the rear hauling the netted human Sky Demon over his shoulder – no-one saw the bearded ghost moving to enter behind them.

And no-one saw the ghost’s form flicker chrome like part of an old film when he hit the salt line at the threshold. “ _Ball_ -!”

Dean quickly grabbed and stood up an old chair lying among the storage shed’s junk, while Uncle began chanting and hopping one-footed. “ _Yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ , _yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ , _yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ …”

Dean stepped back, staring in mild bemusement as Uncle hopped around the chair – he glanced to Sam, who gave a look that roughly translated to, _Whatever goes…_ Then they both looked over at Jade, who shrugged.

“Guess magic isn’t all hopping and stuffed animals in your world, huh?” she asked. Uncle’s circles grew tighter around the chair, blowfish glowing. Then he suddenly ceased them directly in front of the chair and aimed his blowfish – a green beam shot forth, blazing over the chair and its chains. A spiral-pattern of the same solid-green glow materialised in the floor where Uncle had walked, then vanished. Tohru, who’d been standing back by the entrance, immediately marched over with the captive, face firm. Dean took position behind the chair while the sumo and the others came forward – Tohru hurled Hsi Wu’s back into the chair, lightly by the gigantic man’s standards. Eyebrows dark but not nearly dark enough for a hunter, Jackie came forward and pulled the net away from the demon-sorcerer, while Jade held a snail-shell pointed at Hsi Wu’s face. Dean immediately started wrapping the chains around Hsi Wu’s forearms from behind, then his legs. Sam glared calmly at the Sky Demon from on Tohru’s other side, next to Uncle, before Dean finished chaining him down. Hsi Wu was bound with chains criss-crossed over his shoulders and bare chest. Dean walked out from behind the chair to join Sam and the others – meanwhile, the moment Hsi Wu’s arm-muscles flexed, tiny green lightning-forks crackled above the chains, the scrawny demon-sorcerer gritting his teeth and growling slightly.

“These chains are now imbued with a binding chi-spell,” Uncle said, turning to Sam and Dean, though Dean wasn’t in much of a mood to listen to him right now. “Hsi Wu cannot escape them.” The Sky Demon rasped bitterly at his chains, then frowned more-calmly at his audience.

“Well?” he murmured. “To what do I owe the _pleasure_?” He hissed the word _pleasure_ with silky-soft sarcasm, a wide and quite-false smile spreading on his scrawny face.

“We’ve got some questions for you, bird-boy,” Jade said, eyebrows scowling and arms folded as she glared at Hsi Wu from where she leaned against a wall.

“We know about you and Lucifer being in cahoots,” Sam said, glaring calmly, though Dean could hear the slight _tone_ in his voice when he mentioned Lucifer. “So who opened the rift? Your _family_ , or him?”

“That depends on what answering will get me,” he replied. Dean’s reaction was almost automatic: he snatched Sam’s magic-fish and, reaching Hsi Wu in one second, slammed the fish’s mouth on the Sky Demon’s forearm like a dagger’s tip – forks of green lightning instantly crackled from the point of contact, making Hsi Wu scream. The demon-sorcerer tossed his head back, a smell like a burning Rawhead entering Dean’s nostrils. Dean held the fish there for several seconds, dark gaze level with Hsi Wu’s large teeth.

“You want to know what’s in it for you?” Dean growled over the crackling. Hsi Wu’s eyes turned glowing-red as he grit his teeth in agony. “Anything except me doing worse than this until you start squirming.” Dean extracted the fish, the lightning and crackling instantly disappearing, though the smell lingered as Dean stepped backward, while Hsi Wu hissed. “Now answer the question!”

“ _We_ opened the hole,” Hsi Wu said, scowling darkly at Dean. “But you’d have to ask my brother Shendu for the details.”

“Then what happened after you left the Nether-realm?” Sam asked. “Where did you come out on this side?”

“A prison,” Hsi Wu said – Dean noticed a wide smile forming at the distant corners of his mouth. “Lucifer’s wonderful _penthouse_ , I assume,” he said sarcastically. “My brethren and I slipped between the bars – it obviously wasn’t designed with demon-sorcerers in mind. Lucifer, we _sadly_ had to leave behind.” Dean simply looked at Hsi Wu for what felt like a long time, the elder hunter barely aware of how his facial features had shifted into their stony-face mode.

“If this prison is the cage which you spoke of…” Jackie began, glancing toward Sam and Dean.

“…then Lucifer remains imprisoned, and is no threat to your world,” Tohru finished.

“The prison, what did it look like?” Sam asked, looking at Hsi Wu very-intently.

“A box, in a black void,” Hsi Wu responded simply. Sam hadn’t detailed what he remembered of the Cage since his wall had been busted – Dean’s own experience of Hell wasn’t the sort of thing one talked about – but by the relief Dean felt pool in the air from his brother, he guessed that was the answer they could’ve dreamed it was.

“Then this conversation is _over_ ,” Uncle said.

“Before you rid this world of me, smart Uncle,” Hsi Wu said confidently, just as Tohru removed the lamp from his overalls; “perhaps I can help you more.” Screw the slight smile, now Hsi Wu was grinning like Batman’s archenemy.

“Meaning?” Jade asked, cold voice lathered with as much distrust as Dean felt in the pit of his stomach.

“Jade Chan asking me to enlighten her?” Hsi Wu murmured in a taunting musical voice, and then he snickered – Dean found it disturbing how he constantly bared his teeth with that grin. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Answer the question,” Jackie said coldly. Dean simply cleared his throat – the demon-sorcerer’s grin briefly vanished as he looked back, seeing the passive-faced hunter raise the magic fish in one hand.

“If you had to ask me about Lucifer’s prison rather than my brethren, I can’t be the last demon you’ve captured,” Hsi Wu said, chains clinking as he slouched slightly in the chair, looking around at them all. “My wings aren’t the only part of me that makes me Demon of the Sky – my navigation ability is unrivalled. I can sense my kindred and tell you where to look for them.”

“Hsi Wu seeks to deceive us!” Uncle shrieked, though the volume was somewhat indoors-y.

“Yang’s honest truth,” the Sky Demon murmured mischievously in a sing-song tone, raising a bound hand. “Or you can neutralise me permanently, then track down my brethren the same way you found me. If I’m the first demon-sorcerer you’ve located in a fortnight, it should only take you until the midsummer to imprison all the others.” His grin grew slightly larger. “Surely that won’t be enough time for any of my brothers and sisters or my nephew to establish their kingdoms in your world.”

“And why are you selling out your family, Hsi Wu?” Jade spat sceptically.

“Desperate times,” the human Sky Demon growled sourly, grin turning upside-down. “The longer I remain useful, the more time I’ll have. And I expect that if I behave well, I might get a pass on being returned to that mind-numbing Nether-prison.” Jade sneered sardonically, then looked back at her family.

They all shared a look with each-other, before Uncle held his pointed chin in thought, at which point Sam spoke. “Wait a minute. You want to stay useful to these guys?” He directly addressed Hsi Wu, pointing at the Chans generally. “Tell them where to find one of your _brethren_ now.”

“I didn’t hear the magic word,” Hsi Wu retorted – the way he cocked his head towards a shoulder, he probably would’ve had a hand by his ear if he weren’t bound. Dean took two steps forward, then the Sky Demon immediately leaned back in his bindings, eyes turning red.

_Focusing his senses on a particular goal, Hsi Wu saw the Earth’s magnetic field – the blue-glowing magnetic lines were near and small, vast and distant, inside the storage room and through its walls, everywhere. They flowed with an order, curving from the north pole towards the equator, and it instantly told Hsi Wu which way was north and south and how far from either pole he was. Apart from the blue magnetics, this Earth was relatively empty to the Sky Demon’s avian super-sense – in Hsi Wu’s own universe, trying to track magic sources using just his Sky Demon navigation would have been like finding a droplet of paint in the Pacific Ocean, but in this reality, no chi meant no interference (hopefully). Hsi Wu turned his perspective slowly left and right inside the storage space, seeking any familiar blotch in the world’s magnetosphere – there was nothing that had the familiar look of dark-chi on it, just the painful bright-green blotches of good-chi right in front of him, and it both enraged and panicked him-_

Wait. There! _A pulsating red blotch in a specific direction._

Dean, his brother and the Chans watched the bound demon-sorcerer, arms folded and instinct causing a trapped nerve in Dean’s leg. He’d been getting impatient and was ready to tell the Sky Demon he was running out of time, when Hsi Wu’s glowing eyes reverted to their human appearance.

“Well?” Sam said, everyone looking at the Sky Demon with equal parts expectancy and wariness.

“The Earth Demon is twenty-two-hundred miles south-southeast from here,” Hsi Wu said, smiling.

“Then you must go twenty-two-hundred miles south-southeast to imprison him!” Uncle said, turning and looking up at Tohru.

“What about you, Uncle?” Jackie asked, him and Jade looking at the old man – Dean was just about to ask that himself.

“Uncle must be here to keep _two_ eyes on Hsi Wu,” the old man said, blowfish raised in one hand.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dean murmured in outrage, turning Uncle’s head and drawing everyone’s attention. “We said we’d help you catch one demon-sorcerer. We got him!”

“Evil does not rest!” Uncle exclaimed. “If we rest while seven other demons remain loose on upside-down other world, _the demons will be_ _dancing on all our graves_!” His eyes above his spectacles widened and his hair almost seemed to stand up. “Spell which now binds the Sky Demon will be broken if he is moved from this spot, and Uncle and fellow chi-wizard have no backup spell,” Uncle went on as Dean glanced from Hsi Wu, restrained by magic in John’s lock-up, back to Uncle and thought, _Oh, if he’d planned this…!_ ”So, Hsi Wu _must remain here_.” As if reading Dean’s thoughts, the old man suddenly put two hands’ knuckles on either hip and glared like a scolding parent in a kids’ cartoon. “Unless rude young man has more important things to do than guard the demon?!”

Dean didn’t know what he would’ve done, but he knew he would’ve done something if Sam hadn’t cut in; “We don’t, actually.” Dean turned his gaze on his brother’s head – a pause passed before Sam acknowledged it and spoke. “Look, it’s not like we’ve got a high-strung operation that’ll solve our Dick problem down here.” Dean reluctantly relaxed his posture.

Uncle rubbed his chin, looking thoughtful – stepping forward, he pointed and asked, “Do _you_ have important things to do?”

“Me? Guess not?” Sam’s eyes shifted sideways as he spoke.

“You should accompany Uncle’s family to defeat the next demon,” Uncle said nonchalantly. “Earth Demon Dai Gui is _very_ brutish.” Dean immediately looked at Sam – the moment Sam looked his way, Dean mouthed pleadingly; _Come on, don’t leave me with_ -

“Sure.”

“Awesome!” Jade said, smiling at Sam enthusiastically.

“If we leave now, we should be in time to avoid the lunchtime rush,” Tohru said.

“Sounds great,” Sam said while Dean continued looking at him urgently – then Sam grasped Dean’s shoulder and whispered to him: “ _Keep it cool, you’ll make a great host_.” Dean’s only response was to clench his jaw and glare after Sam as he walked away, Tohru leading towards the exit.

“No goodbye kiss, Jade?” Hsi Wu murmured mischievously, grinning at Jade’s back as she walked behind Sam, Tohru and Jackie – the woman immediately halted.

She smirked sideways at Dean, and Uncle standing nearby. “Don’t give demon-mouth too much attention or stuff to do. He hates getting tediously dragged through one event into another.”

“You can bet your sweet ass on it,” Dean murmured, managing to smirk slightly at the thought of the Sky Demon stuck with nothing to do. Hsi Wu’s toothy grin turned upside-down. Dean-

 _Whack._ ” _Argh_!”

“ _YOU_ will speak to Uncle’s niece _with respect_!” the old man shrieked at Dean furiously, eyes bulging furiously, before he suddenly cooled down. “Now, where is chair for Uncle?”

* * *

The giant sumo emerged from the grey multi-storey building first, followed by the white man with neck-length brown hair, then the sweater-clad Asian man and the woman. They headed to the parked Ford, whilst a parked Nissan Skyline with faded paint watched across the road. The occupant of the Nissan was an Asian man with tanned skin, that much could be discerned from his hard, cold eyes reflected in the Nissan’s wing mirror, with hints of bright-red hair – there was the small sound of him opening a flip-phone and dialling before he spoke.

“I have eyes on Jackie Chan – _our_ Chan – in Buffalo, New York along with the rest of the clan.” His voice was gravelly and harsh.

“ _Where are you now_?” a lighter masculine voice growled through the phone.

“Chan and three others are leaving a locker shed, which they just entered with a man in a net – perhaps one of your relatives?” As the spy spoke, the overalls-clad sumo squeezed in through the distant Ford’s tailgate-door – a pause followed before the boss on the phone spoke again.

“ _Follow them_ ,” the boss growled. “ _I want to know where Jackie Chan is going and what he’s doing_.” The spy didn’t reply, quickly disconnecting the call. A few moments later, the Ford took off, and then the Nissan pulled away from the curb to follow.


	11. Deceit

_OUTBREAK OF FISSURES AND SINKHOLES PROMPTS FEAR OF MASS EVACUATIONS_ , read the giant-lettered headline of the newspaper Jade held, a photo of a giant fissure running through a street directly below. She leaned with one hip propped against the Squire’s side-door, Jackie peering at the newspaper by her shoulder.

“The Earth Demon has been busy in Brownsville,” Jackie murmured.

“You don’t say,” Jade mused – a wide, rippling river was behind her head, long grass lining its opposite bank, as she folded the paper and tossed it in the Squire’s open side-window. She was quite confident after skimming the front page that Dai Gui hadn’t skipped Brownsville, Texas just yet.

“You are sure that this will work, Tohru?” Jackie asked calmly, him and Jade looking ahead and walking forward. Tohru stood straight on the riverside dirt road, while Sam stood beside him with a chi-opossum in hand. Tohru’s hands were clapped together in a prayer-like stance, chi-lizard pointed skyward with his fingertips clamped on its tail, glowing green with chi-magic.

“In theory, Dai Gui the Earth Demon will sense the good-magic burst and will come seeking to neutralise the threat,” Tohru said, turning his head to look over a shoulder at Jade. “Just like Hsi Wu.”

“Great,” Sam murmured, body language already as alert as Jade felt. “So when does the party start?”

As if on cue, Tohru started chanting rapidly, “ _Jing-jau-jyu-joeng_ , _jing-jau-jyu-joeng_ , _jing-jau-jyu-joeng_ …” The chi-lizard’s glow intensified, then a green beam shot vertically into the semi-overcast sky. Sam almost-immediately began turning his head and looking around. Jade figured he was conscious of the road bridge with moving vehicles, visible behind her back from here, and she also saw Jackie looking over his shoulder at it. The skyward beam only lasted a few seconds, then disappeared with a slight flash, a green wave rolling outward through the clouding and fading. Tohru lowered his chi-weapon. “There is no way of knowing how long it will be before the demon arrives,” Tohru said, turning to address Sam mostly but also her.

“We should be ready for a surprise,” Jade’s long-haired uncle said, moving away from her so the four humans all had some space.

“Dai Gui is basically a land-shark in our world – look out for wormsigns,” Jade told Sam, eyebrows slightly dark as she already felt that serious preparation coming over her.

“Yeah, got it,” Sam said, relaxed yet ready, clearly familiar with this kind of work. After just a few seconds of waiting, Jade felt the slightest vibration through her shoes, so minor that anyone else would have probably ignored it altogether.

“There!” Tohru said, pointing his lizard-holding hand angularly. Jade, Sam and Jackie followed his arm. At the far end of their river bank, a trailing cloud of brown dust and earth rose from beyond the crest of the lumpy hills bordering the dirt-road. It crawled rapidly among the hills towards where they were, moving with speed like a Ferrari – as it quickly got closer, Jade saw the cloud was moving forward by kicking new earth and dust up at its front, ejecting it with dynamite-like force. She shifted one foot and tensed as the cloud came twenty feet diagonally away from them. Earth suddenly broke down the hill from the crest, small slabs shooting upwards at the crack’s head to form a horrible ridge, before the crack halted its arrow-like trajectory short of the four humans. Relatively-thin slabs of grey earth pushed and lifted upwards underneath a large figure, who was sliding vertically from the earth like the effects of Po Kong’s earthquakes. Sam immediately fired his chi-weapon, Jade followed half-a-second behind – Dai Gui raised the chair-size chunk of earth he’d been holding, the green blasts dissipating against it, then he threw it forward. Jackie cried out in the quarter-a-second before he, Sam and Jade leapt clear, Sam and Jade splitting in either direction – Tohru wasn’t so lucky, screaming as the earth-mound shattered into a shower of black-and-brown against him. His back smashed into the water as he fell, producing an upwards-blast before he was submerged.

“Tohru!” Jackie yelled. Jade turned her eyes back to the human demon, running towards her with a fist raised above his head. Human Dai Gui was human-size but built like a world wrestling champion with his sloping shoulders and huge torso; his denim jeans and leather jacket were brown with earth, and long hair flowed wildly behind a red-eyed, snarling apish face. Glowering and gritting her teeth, Jade raised her arm straight and fired a chi-blast. The human Earth Demon _just_ angled his giant shoulders mid-run so the green blast all but grazed past. Grunting, Jackie leapt into the air. Dai Gui raised an arm like he meant to shield his face. Surprisingly, Jackie landed in a light-footed crouch atop the human demon’s arm, then half-somersaulted above Dai Gui’s gaping head – hooking two fingers in the square-shaped face’s large nostrils, and yanking the Earth Demon with him. Dai Gui staggered backwards with a throaty cry – though his voice no longer sounded too loud to be human, it still sounded too deep. Jade pointed and fired with her chi-weapon some more, as did Sam on Dai Gui’s flank, but the Earth Demon’s legs and flailing arms moved too much for a chi-blast to hit. Then a chi-shot from Sam hit Jackie crouched atop Dai Gui’s back and shoulders, the square-jawed man’s eyes bulging as he cried out, chi-magic blazing on him. The green dissipated after a moment, leaving Jackie’s long hair looking frizzy and standing up in places. He glared slightly at Sam, Jade also looking.

“Sorry!” Sam quickly shouted before firing another shot – it barely missed Dai Gui’s knee as he staggered slightly. Yelling, Dai Gui reached a large hand over his shoulder – Jackie somersaulted, too late, the hand grabbing his ankle. He screamed as the Earth Demon yanked him back. Caveman-like face twisted in a vicious sneer – Jade noticed even Dai Gui’s human canines were pointed and apelike – the demon threw Jackie forward with a swing of his arm. Jade dodged sideways a split-second before she would’ve been knocked down, gaze tracking as Jackie shot into Tohru, who’d been wading through the water – both almost-instantly disappeared in a violent splash. Jade spun her head back around, gasping as she saw Dai Gui thunder towards her, huge fist raised. She sidestepped a split-second before Dai Gui hammer-fisted the earth where she’d stood, producing a sound like a giant iron had fallen thirty feet. The human demon’s hair-decorated shoulders were level with Jade’s navel, and she roundhouse-kicked his cheek – Dai Gui’s head snapped in the opposite direction. He staggered a couple steps away. Quickly recovering, the Earth Demon scowled savagely at Jade, who registered the tuft of a beard on his chin like in his true form, murderous eyes now humanlike and brown – one second before behind Dai Gui’s back, Sam kicked out at his right hamstring. The demon yelled, a second before collapsing into a kneeling posture. He didn’t stay like that for more than one second before his face contorted with volcanic rage, giving Jade the urge to recoil. Yelling, Dai Gui swung out an arm behind his back, huge knuckles barely missing Sam’s midsection as he recoiled. Getting up, the demon made to swing another fist, when Jackie reappeared from the river, performing a flying kick which sent Dai Gui reeling horizontally away. After staggering several steps, the Earth Demon stopped, wide eyes on Jackie standing combat-ready.

“No rock-hard skin, Dai Gui?” Jackie murmured, his smirk’s wideness practically audible. Face contorted with fury, Dai Gui lunged at Jackie, bringing his left fist forward – it stopped on air as Jackie dodged to his right, before the Earth Demon slowly pivoted his left wrist and backhanded. Jade heard the violent smack of Dai Gui’s hand on Jackie’s face. The strike sent her uncle flying and half-spinning backwards before he crashed to earth.

“ _JACKIE_!” Jade yelled, eyes widening. Jackie’s head was turned away from her and he was unmoving. Dai Gui had his eyes on Jackie, when a green chi-blast suddenly hit his back, making him briefly flash green and collapse to his knees. Not looking at the blast’s source, Jade turned and yelled: “Tohru, the lamp!”

“I can’t find it!” Tohru yelled, waters splashing furiously as the half-submerged sumo swiped and smashed his arms underwater, damp hair sticking on his forehead. Teeth grit, Jade looked ahead again. Another chi-bolt from the same direction hit Dai Gui, who yelled as the green beam remained constant. Turning her head, Jade saw Sam, teeth grit, pointing his chi-weapon with both hands as the chi-beam flowed from it. Hearing the Earth Demon growl – sounding more animalistic with his human voice for it – Jade saw the green-glowing goliath reach rigidly for Jackie’s ankle.

Her glowing chi-shell was immediately pointed. “No you-!”

Dai Gui threw Jackie’s body behind his shoulder like a ragdoll. Sam cut off the magic-flow a second before Jackie collided with him, knocking them both to the ground near the Squire. Yelling, Dai Gui thundered straight towards Sam, leaning forward. Jade fired two chi-beams, which both missed him. As he ran, Dai Gui tore a beach ball-sized rock free of the ground like it were a softball, throwing it.

“ _Sam, look ou_ -!” He’d just been carefully shrugging Jackie’s body off and getting up – then the rock shot in a beeline against his exposed leg. Sam immediately screamed from the impact – a second later, he collapsed to one knee. Jade sprinted forward, yelling as she leapt and performed a roundhouse kick, the sideways-strike to Dai Gui’s head immediately knocking him out of his course. He staggered straight towards the Squire, losing his footing and falling forward, just before his body from the midsection up slammed into the hood, and the car’s alarm instantly started blaring - it hadn’t crumpled, but its front end was dipping earthwards and its rear end looked too high up with the human demon splayed on it. Beside Jade, Sam slowly forced himself to stand, eyes ahead. So his kneecap hadn’t been hit.

“Nice kick,” he said, impressed, before hissing with pain, one hand on his right thigh. He turned his head at the same time Jade ran to Jackie on the ground, Sam limping forward just behind her. They didn’t notice Dai Gui bury a corded hand’s fingers in the earth. They only re-raised their chi-weapons at the sound of a giant earth-chunk being torn out. The human demon had raised his earth shield, just in time for it to catch the first few chi-blasts which would have hit near his face – he immediately charged forward with the shield, something about this making Jade imagine a bull rodeo. Jade and Sam stopped firing at the same time, eyes wide as the Earth Demon’s wall fast approached. Then Sam all but kicked Jackie’s limp form a couple feet sideways, grabbing Jade’s midsection as they leapt – Dai Gui thundered through the spot where they and Jackie had been, just as Sam and Jade hit the ground with a grunt. Jade recovered a second after Sam, seeing the Earth Demon had halted, vicious snarling face turning on them. Jade fired her chi-weapon first. Dai Gui raised his earth shield as he lumbered forward, the green energy being harmlessly absorbed.

“Come on!” Sam said quickly, getting up directly behind Jade and half-pulling Jade up. They ran horizontally from Dai Gui – out of her eye’s corner, Jade saw him stop lumbering, pivoting his torso with his earth-wielding arm pulled back.

“ _JADE_!” Tohru yelled from the water, the Earth Demon’s arm swinging at her vision’s edge – a second later, she knew only the loud, crunching thump of earth smashing into her and Sam, then blackness.

* * *

Against a pale background, Jade saw two greyish shapes moving, heard Tohru’s voice yelling – bright flashes rapidly appeared and disappeared between the figures, threatening to break her daze. Until the larger shape moved, a lighter-grey splotch shooting from the larger shape just before the smaller subsided.

Jade lost awareness again, then knew two smaller figures shifting one-in-front,-other-in-front, towards her – _legs_. Her gaze pivoted, seeing a sideways face nearby – her uncle Jackie’s face, his eyelids shut. She blinked out again, though her head threatened to pound with urgency this time.

Then she was rising to the height of a large figure in her vision’s centre, faintly registering the sensation of being lifted. Her brain threatened to act like it were throbbing though she currently felt nothing, her unconscious urging her to remember something important. The fight with Dai Gui came back scrap-by-scrap, and Jade’s vision quickly focused while an ache came into her forehead. Her eyes were level with Dai Gui’s, his square human face marred with sharp lines, mouth twisted in a savage grimace – this close, she noted the Asian human-demon’s apelike features, with the giant blotchy nose and the wide mouth, a thin beard running along his jawline away from his tuft-beard, wavy hair framing his face on either side. Jade’s brain next registered how taut her shirt felt, its front hooked to something keeping her off the ground.

“I will tear you limb from limb!” Dai Gui snarled – non-demonic voice sounding hoarse with its overt deepness when it articulated words, dark-brown eyes boring her with murderous intensity. Eyes bulging, Jade grabbed the leather-clad arm that held a fistful of her shirt. “Then you shall feed the worms in the earth!” While he spoke, Jade’s head turned with highway-like speed, looking for the others. Tohru was lying face-up in the water just by Dai Gui’s head; Sam was stirring on the ground which Jade’s feet were three inches above, bits of earth atop his clothes and the surrounding ground, hazel eyes opening and losing their bleariness. “I think I will start with this!” Dai Gui’s free hand grabbed Jade’s wrist and pulled the arm taut, yet she could feel the Earth Demon was holding back for the moment – panic surged through her, the Earth Demon grinning darkly.

“ _NO_!” Sam suddenly yelled behind Jade’s ankles. Shifting his gaze, Dai Gui raised a boot like he meant to smash it through Sam’s ribcage. Sam barely rolled in time to avoid the hydraulic-like strike to the earth. He scrambled a few movements sideways, then his long hair whipped as he met Dai Gui’s gaze, hazel eyes wide and bright-seeming. Releasing Jade’s arm, Dai Gui raised that arm’s fist in another hammer-strike, mouth open in a deep-throated yell.

“ _Okay, you win_!” Sam suddenly yelled, throwing his palms up. The Earth Demon immediately paused, while Jade gaped over her shoulder at Sam disbelievingly. “We surrender. You’re way too big and strong for us.” Jade’s brown eyes met Sam’s, and despite his uneasy-looking face, she saw something reassuringly cunning in his gaze. Whatever it was, she wasn’t really in a position to try anything else.

“What he said!” Jade exclaimed quickly, smiling and nodding her head at Dai Gui, who was looking menacingly at her. “We surrender.” The Earth Demon slowly turned his head from her back to Sam. Then he released Jade’s shirt, letting her fall the short distance to the ground in front of Sam.

“Then beg Dai Gui for mercy so you may live in my kingdom!” Dai Gui roared loudly, pointing a dirty-nailed finger at the two humans.

“We beg you for mercy, completely and utterly!” Jade said, quickly prostrating with her knees sandwiched below her belly, chin nearly touching the ground behind her hands, though she kept looking at Dai Gui’s face – Sam quickly mimicked her posture, knocking his head to the earth once.

“We beg to be allowed to live under the demon who conquered Hell,” Sam said, also looking up.

Dai Gui took one second to grunt in surprise, brown eyes widening before he said in puzzlement, “What?!”

“The demon who conquered Hell,” Sam repeated, sounding puzzled as Jade glanced at him. “The kingdom in the earth that rules everything underground. Lucifer’s prison.” Jade’s eyes widened slightly and she resisted the smile at her lips’ corners.

“Yeah,” Jade added, also looking up at Dai Gui and nodding. “They’d never let an _Earth_ Demon from another universe challenge them.” Dai Gui stared blandly for a moment, no more than a monotone sigh leaving his throat like the rusted cogs in his head were slowly turning – they didn’t get the reaction they’d hoped, as he suddenly snarled in rage, eyes glowing red.

“So _that_ is it!” he growled like his conclusion were obvious, slamming a boot into the earth so hard the vibration ran up through Jade and Sam’s bones, the Earth Demon’s lips curled savagely. “You think to trick me into defeating Hell demons for you!”

“No, no, I’ve been to Hell, I know!” Sam yelled quickly, him and Jade still prostrating.

“Me and my uncles thought that you and your demon-family would be there!” Jade chipped in, not lying directly – some demons in her universe could tell when a person lied outright. Dai Gui let out a breathy growl as he slowly thought, then a groan made all three turn their heads. To see Jackie rising on the ground – he turned his head, eyes looking dazed for a moment, then becoming clear at the sight.

“ _Jade_!” he yelled, flipping into a stand like he hadn’t just been knocked out, instantly in a combat posture.

“We were just surrendering!” Jade quickly yelled on the ground, in the same moment Dai Gui had turned his body and growled.

“ _Wha_ -?” Jackie began uncertainly – Jade winked the eye that was further from the Earth Demon, though her face was serious. Jackie’s face was deadly-torn as he looked from Jade back at Dai Gui, a moment before he sank into a prostrate.

“Heh-heh – all hail his earthy highness!” Jackie said nervously, face in front of his earth-flat arms grinning nervously-wide. Dai Gui took a menacing stomp in Jackie’s direction, Jade’s long-haired uncle immediately looking worried while an anxious ball leapt up Jade’s throat.

“I shall deal with you in time!” Dai Gui growled, glaring first at Jackie, then at Jade and Sam nearer him. “First, I shall claim Hell demons’ entitlement. For my own!” A second later, he began shovelling through the earth in front of his boots with his bare hands, digging up and churning brown earth-mounds twice his hands’ size. Jade and Sam promptly recoiled from their prostrations, backing away. Jackie likewise returned to his feet, watching Dai Gui’s height slowly sink. In a few seconds, the Earth Demon had completely disappeared, soil sifting and settling in the mound-surrounded crater he’d left. Then, a small fissure began splintering with animal-speed away from the crater, horizontal to Jade and Sam – turning up earth as it rapidly crawled in Jackie’s general direction but curved away from him, its invisible source making the earth vibrate like with a small earthquake. The line of breaking earth ascended a hill’s crest, and the tremor gradually faded with the sound of splintering earth – only then did Jade break her gaze on the hills.

“For heat-of-the-moment thinking, that wasn’t bad,” she said, smiling slightly at Sam.

“First thing in my head,” Sam said, smiling slightly at her, before turning his head towards Jackie.

“Let’s help Tohru,” Jackie said firmly, pointing sideways at the river. The three wordlessly ran forward, jogging or sprinting into the river’s waters. The floating sumo started groaning in the same moment Jade waded to him, Jackie and Sam behind her.

“You okay, Big T?” Jade asked, eyebrows only slightly-low as she got her hand on Tohru’s arm and shoulder-blade, helping him to stand upright on the river bed – she mentally noted his glasses were missing.

“What happened?” Tohru groaned, and it could’ve made Jade smile that he didn’t look seriously harmed. His dazed-looking eyes blinked while Jackie got behind his back.

“You missed an _infernal_ dupe,” Jackie quipped, while Sam got on Tohru’s other side. With Jade and Sam holding Tohru by either arm, and with Jackie behind one shoulder, they began wading with him back to shore, water splashing.

“Where are my glasses…?” Tohru murmured. Jade could’ve mentally winced at the thought of how long find them on the river bed could take, but a more important thought was bugging her first and foremost.

“So, what, Dai Gui tries to take on every demon in Hell, and they turn each-other to demon-ash?” she asked Sam. She remembered that one time she’d killed a demon as a kid, though she wasn’t sure how it would work if one died in an Earth-Two universe.

“Hopefully either that, or Dai Gui does some prison time,” Sam replied to Jade.

* * *

Sam rubbed the back of his neck and cleared his throat as he stepped through the open door into the musty storage room, feeling the need to stretch his legs slightly after so many hours in the Squire the Chans used. Uncle was standing opposite Hsi Wu’s chair with a book hanging from one hand, an extra chair a foot behind his back – in the chains-sporting chair, Hsi Wu was smiling seemingly-forever, eyes glowing red and seeming to pulsate.

“Hsi Wu has not revealed the location of the next demon,” Uncle said as Sam approached, before the old man looked at Sam like a new thought had just occurred. “Did you find and defeat the Earth Demon?”

“Well, sort of,” Sam said warily. Uncle immediately looked alert, beady eyes accusing – Hsi Wu’s eyes regained their human appearance, arching a bushy brow at Sam in interest. “He was where Hsi Wu said, and it looked like he wasn’t moving on anytime soon. But we lost the lamp for a moment, and he was on me and Jade, so we…”

* * *

Dean was happily minding his own business in the second-floor, low-pay suite with peeling wallpaper that he and Sam had rented directly across the street from the Castle Storage place – and by minding his own business, that for Dean meant reading _Busty Asian Beauties_ at a table with a beer, while Jackie in the back of the suite was busy practicing his moves with Tohru catching his strikes in his palms, and Jade was slouching on one of the beds.

Behind an unconcerned Dean, Jackie stopped practicing and Tohru turned his head with Jackie’s gaze to the window, as if they’d heard a faint echo of two particular syllables reach them from somewhere outside.

“Er… did you hear something?” Jackie asked neither of the room’s other two occupants in particular, turning his head to them – Dean in response lifted his heavy eyes and listened for a moment, before he grunted out his somewhat-quick reply.

“No.”

* * *

Sam groaned, holding a hand to where his temple had been struck with precision.

“The demon _must_ be sealed inside the lamp to be returned to its own reality!” Uncle shrieked furiously at Sam, grey eyebrows diagonally-sloped and wild hair practically standing on end. “ _To fill the void its absence leaves_!”

“Well, the way our _Hobbit_ dragon-talk went, it looks like Dai Gui’s headed to Hell and he isn’t going to wait on the doorstep to be let in,” Sam quickly reasoned. “I can summon the King of Hell – he’s a slimeball, but he’ll probably want Dai Gui out of Hell – and he can bring him topside.” As quick and thought-out as his plan was, Sam felt it rather feeble for how much it relied on said King of Hell just gift-wrapping them a demon-sorcerer.

“Speak of a demon, and another will appear,” a hoarse voice murmured flippantly, prompting Sam and Uncle to immediately look. Hsi Wu gave them his disturbingly-wide grin looking like something that belonged in a Halloween film, before his red eyes reverted to human dark-brown. “My brother Tchang Zu is three-hundred miles away, southeast,” he said, leaning back in his chains like the chair were a throne – then he cocked his head slightly, smiling widely. “Be warned, Sam Winchester, he’s not the type who’ll shy away from _fireworks_.”

“You must contact this slimeball-demon to bring us Dai Gui immediately,” Uncle told Sam sternly, pointing a finger. “Uncle and family will leave to defeat Tchang Zu. Tohru will stay here and guard Hsi Wu.” He immediately moved to walk past Sam.

“Now?” Sam asked, eyebrows raised.

“No! _Tomorrow, mister quick-on-uptake_!” Uncle shrieked in Sam’s face, raising both hands above his goatish head. “The longer we are delaying, the longer Tchang Zu the Thunder Demon is free in your earthly realm!”

“Look, Uncle,” Sam quickly interjected before the old man could walked past him, “everyone else is beat right about now. If everyone’s still tired out when they fight the next demon-sorcerer, the odds won’t exactly be in our favour.” Their eyes locked. Uncle held his chin and hummed thoughtfully.

“Good brains need good time to selves and sheep,” Uncle murmured in a musical tone. “Uncle will accompany the rude one on the next demon hunt.” Sam could’ve blanched in surprise, doubting Dean would like that.

* * *

Per Uncle’s suggestion, Sam didn’t waste more time on the summoning spell than the few minutes it took to put one together back at the hotel suite, on the circular table – he and Dean agreed they didn’t want Hsi Wu in the same room as Crowley, or the Earth Demon. Jade and Jackie stood and watched with folded arms (frowning in a way which had Sam guessing they weren’t used to allying with demons), as Sam tossed the lit match into the candle-surrounded bowl. A medium burst of rasping flame sharply flared from the bowl, casting orange light, then the flames died, leaving wispy smoke – and no extra figure. Everyone’s eyes shifted, looking about as if expecting to spot the King of Hell in some uncanny corner.

“Is he trying to make a grand entrance?” Jade asked.

“I dunno,” Sam replied.

“Sonovabitch, he’s standing us up,” the non-tall hunter said, voice barely-audible from outside the suite’s window – with their backs turned to said window, none of the four conscious figures saw the black-coated shoulder or the head of the figure standing six feet behind it on the balcony-railing, watching.

* * *

Hsi Wu’s human face was permanently smiling, eyes glowing red as he delved into his navigation-map again.

_He peered and scoured in various directions, looking for any familiar red blips among the blue-glowing currents of the Earth’s poles – Hsi Wu’s current jailers had a demon-locating magic lamp, which he had to beat in this particular race, so now wouldn’t be an unwise time to search for another of his brethren. Besides that, Hsi Wu kept fixing his gaze on that specific red blotch a certain number of miles in the southeast, ensuring he could still locate it, checking how far it had moved and in what direction – the way this particular demon had been zigzagging back and forth, neither settling in a single spot long nor travelling on a simple course, could only mean they were up to something beyond just picking a spot and starting their conquest._

What are you up to? _Hsi Wu mentally murmured, navigation-gaze on the red blotch scrutinising – his tone was bitterly puzzling, though he kept his body’s facial features schooled._

* * *

The beating heart shone inside the chest cavity, the only part of the life-size stick effigy that was made of real flesh as of yet. Then veins of bright purple light climbed upward along the torso to the effigy’s head, forming bright-red hair in front of the caster’s extended, large and bony hand with talon-sharp fingernails. The caster was a man with medium-length black hair that stuck up angrily, thick brows knitted on a young but hard face with spiky sideburns joining to a beard, broad mouth forming a mirthless smile. He lowered his hand and began pacing as he spoke to his small audience.

“Welcome to life… _minions_ ,” Drago murmured, the humanised demon-sorcerer in a long grey overcoat subtly spitting the last word with venom as his smile faded. He was pacing in front of the figures in a dark, vegetation-enclosed skating park at night. “Questions. ‘Am I a real boy?’ Well, the answer’s no, Pinocchio. You’re as real as my memory of what you were like is. And yes, you have strings.” Drago’s dark human eyes widened and he grinned ferally, showing off his slightly-sharp teeth, as he emphasised, “And thanks to a little alternate-universe witch’s-magic and some tweaking to the spell, _I’m_ the marionette.” Drago continued pacing, in heavy, steely-grey boots below camo pants. “Personally, I would’ve used the other crew I hired after you deadbeats for this puppet-spell, but the last time I trusted them, they threw me in a river – so I need someone more weak-willed, more suggestible to help me. Here’s your job summary: you’re my lackeys, and you will dig any dirt for me I tell you to! In exchange – you can expect to be excluded from being burned-” Drago held up a hand with a finger pointed, a yellow flame glowing at the tip, to accentuate his point. “-and you’ll be at my side when I’m _on top of the universe_!” Drago clenched his fist and his dark-brown eyes practically lit up at the sentence’s end.

The three figures in front of Drago – a scrawny, pasty redhead with a hooked nose and white suit, an equally-scrawny Asian man wearing orange shades who was the youngest-looking of the trio, and a sloping-shouldered, sasquatch-like man in a cheap suit – were staring wide-eyed at their creator and master, perfect likenesses of the originals whom they’d been magically cloned from. They exchanged an uncertain look among themselves.

“So… is Hak Foo a clone, or what?” Finn asked, pointing with his thumb over to where the bulky, spiky-haired assassin was lurking at the park’s side with his arms crossed.

“If I’m not real… does that mean I can pinch myself without hurting?” Ratso asked almost enthusiastically with a glance at his large sasquatch-hand, earning him a glance from Chow.

“So… what’s the bi master plan… boss?” Chow asked carefully.

“The usual kind,” Drago said darkly, smirking, letting lightning arcs cascade off him and howling wind surround him with his demon-chi powers. “ _Apocalyptic_.”


	12. Thunderclap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we're at the latest chapter. This story is being updated roughly every four weeks on both FF.net and AO3, and the next chapter should be coming rather soon.

**Bozeman, Montana**

The man at the front of the queue walked away with his paper-wrapped burger, the apron-clad hotdog stand vendor already tending to his food with his face lowered again.

“One hotdog with barbeque sauce, one vegetarian hotdog with onions, and a bacon double-cheeseburger, please,” said the next customer, stepping forward.

“Medium or _large_ …?” the vendor trailed off at the last word, eyes widening when he saw the customer’s face, to their exasperation. “You- Oh, my God, you’re Jackie Chan!” he exclaimed in awe.

“Yes, but I just want food for myself, my niece and my friend,” Jackie said pleasantly, raising both palms and grinning – after more than two weeks of being hailed as a Hollywood celebrity in this alternate universe, he had grown quite tired of it.

“O-Of course, coming right up!” the young man said enthusiastically, beaming. He moved with new speed, then suddenly stopped and asked, “Hey, can I have your autograph?”

Jackie felt he had to say, “I haven’t got a pen or pap…”

“I’ve got one,” the man said quickly, fumbling before getting a pen out of his pocket. “Here.” He handed Jackie an unused greaseproof paper. Jackie took the pen, sighing slightly under his breath as he scribbled on the paper – he didn’t even know if his signature was the same as this world’s Jackie Chan’s. The vendor got to work scraping food immediately. Once he was finished, Jackie placed the paper – slightly crumpled to stop the wind blowing it – atop one of the stand’s counters, and fumbled in his pocket.

“How much is that?” Jackie mumbled as the stand vendor placed a meal-filled plastic bag on the counter.

“Oh, _you_ don’t need to pay, Mr. Chan,” the vendor said pleasantly, grinning like a TV commercial mascot.

“I insist,” Jackie said.

“This is enough payment,” the owner said, swiping and waving the signed paper. “On the house.” After a couple seconds pocket-rummaging, Jackie sighed and took the bag. He couldn’t waste time here, lest the next demon-sorcerer strike before they had gotten ready.

“Thank you,” he said, grinning and waving.

“You have a nice day, Mr. Chan!”

Jackie couldn’t get back to the car Dean had obtained, parked in an alley, soon enough – the way he could barely go out anywhere in this alternate universe without people in the street gasping and whispering his name in awe had gotten him used to being indoors and out of people’s sight. Finding the 70s Ford LTD parked in the lane, he opened the passenger’s side-door and climbed in next to Dean.

Dean sighed sleepily as Jackie put his hand in the plastic bag.

“Ah, grub!” Dean said, smiling elatedly. “Did you have to pay for it?”

“They _insisted_ I take it for free,” Jackie said, glowering disapprovingly, and trying not to think too much about why Dean and Sam seemed so at-ease with the idea of such crimes.

“Yeah, I’ll bet they insisted,” Dean said, smirking as Jackie handed him his cheeseburger.

“Jade, your hotdog.” Jackie smiled as he handed the paper-wrapped meal into the backseat.

“Awesome,” his niece said, smiling as she took it, while Uncle was peering sideways next to her and eating a chi-mung bean sandwich. “Non-filling alternate reality food or not, this had better taste good.” Dean smiled to himself while chewing, and Jackie had to admit as he dug into his own meal, he wasn’t sure he could go for more than a fortnight eating nothing but Uncle’s interdimensionally-imported mung bean sandwiches. He found his vegetarian hotdog tasted the same in this world as one in his own – perhaps slightly blander.

“How often do you eat those things?” Jackie questioned between bites, staring aghast at the greasy-looking junk which Dean took a bite out of.

“Eh, about eight times a week,” Dean said offhandedly, mouth still full. Jackie sighed slightly, disturbed – had to wonder how Dean’s heart was beating. “God, I could eat these things forever.”

“Ancient proverb: urge people to work, not to eat!” Uncle all but shouted, mouth free of food, his rising voice commanding Jackie’s attention. “Ask Mountain Demon!” Jackie saw Dean’s jaw slow its movements, eyes glaring through the windshield. Just when it had looked to Jackie like Dean and Uncle would share a car without driving each-other mad.

“Easy, Unc, we’re not here to argue about Dean’s eating problem,” Jade said, which Jackie was grateful for.

“M- My what?!” Dean almost-immediately responded in outrage, turning his head.

“We are here to locate and imprison Tchang Zu the Thunder Demon, before he causes any harm to the town,” Jackie quickly re-stated their objective before any further argument could start, then took another small bite out of his meal. Jade hummed, sounding troubled.

“Maybe Hsi Wu lied about this one,” she said, brows dark as she looked skyward. “There wasn’t anyone running and screaming when we came to town, and the weather isn’t looking thunderous.” Indeed, the sky outside was blue with only some scattered white clouding.

Jackie gulped down his bite. “Perhaps we arrived too late?” he suggested.

“I don’t know,” Dean said, mouth less full this time. “There was nothing on the web happening in Pennsylvania when we nabbed Hsi Wu. What are the odds that Pikachu is laying low for now?” Jackie sighed, defeatedly – he doubted he had nearly enough memories of Tchang Zu to be able to predict his behaviour, since it had been over ten years since he and his family had first banished him.

“The Thunder Demon could strike at any moment!” Uncle suddenly shrieked, making Jackie wince with one eye open as he dropped his hotdog. “You must _eat faster_!” he exclaimed, both food-free palms raised skyward.

“What the hell happened to work-and-don’t-eat?!” Dean all but growled, burger two-thirds eaten. Jade responded to Uncle’s command by calmly stuffing her entire half-a-hotdog wholly in her mouth, one hand covering it.

“Proverb is _don’t eat, not eat slowly_!” Uncle yelled at Dean loudly enough to make Jackie cringe. Looking at his own hotdog, Jackie doubted he’d be able to repeat Jade’s mouth-stuffing. He placed it in his side-door’s map-pocket, while Dean took a last animal-bite from his burger before throwing it and the paper out the side-window.

Uncle hollered as Dean revved the ignition, “ _You waste food_!”

“Let’s just find Tchang Zu,” Jackie deadpanned. A moment later, the car started to the lane’s exit ahead, and turned onto the road.

“ _Jing jau jyu joeng_ … _Jing jau jyu joeng_ …” Uncle murmured the incantations slowly over the drive around the town, chi-blowfish blazing unusually-bright with green chi as he held it vertically-pointed by its tail-fin between his clapped-together two fingers. Jackie had next to nothing to do until they found the demon but scan the rolling sights outside his side-window, looking for any flitting-by faces who seemed to react suspiciously while the car passed. He saw an old lady about to cross the road look, then a garage attendant, and he doubted either of them had some demonic sixth sense. Jackie looked over his shoulder at the conspicuously-bright chi-blowfish and sighed.

They’d driven around several blocks over twenty minutes, when Jackie saw Dean glance in the rear-view mirror, a dark-blue car on their tail. Jackie glanced over his shoulder directly through the rear windshield, ignorant of the green glow and Uncle’s chanting.

“This guy’s been tailing us a while,” Jade noted, looking back with eyebrows dark. Wordlessly, Dean turned the steering wheel right.

A couple blocks further along, their Ford rolled past a pair of gates – a sign on one of the gate columns reading ‘SUNSET HILLS CEMETERY’ – onto a dirt-road arched by rows of trees. The blue BMW Turbo rolled through the same gates about seven seconds behind. A few moments after entering, the Ford pulled over. Dean promptly killed the engine, him and Jackie immediately getting out the side-doors.

Ten seconds later, the BMV rolled around the slight bend in the dirt road. Half-crouched among the vegetation with yellow daylight filtering through the trees; Dean, Jackie and Jade watched near the group’s front with Uncle nestled behind them. The BMV rolled slowly – _too slowly_ – past their abandoned Ford. Ten feet ahead, the Ford pulled over and its engine died. As the crouched Chans and hunter peered through the vegetation, the door open and closed with a sound. The driver stalked at a walker’s pace towards the empty Ford – Jackie could only see a blue denim jacket and jeans, which brought the Thunder Demon’s blue skin to mind, and slightly corded-looking hands holding something. Jackie silently turned his head, meeting Dean’s composed if disturbingly-cold green eyes. They shared a look with Jade, whose eyebrows were dark, then looked back at Uncle – he held the magic lamp and a chi-lizard up in either hand, smirking slightly. Jackie charged onto the road first, leaping into a flying kick half-a-second before he knocked their opponent back. The martial artist landed in a crouch, looking back. Dean and Jade ran with their chi-weapons aimed like guns, while Uncle chanted behind them.

“ _Yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ …”

“Oh, God! Please, I don’t mean you harm!”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa!” Dean suddenly shot out an arm as if to shield Jade or keep her back, making her immediately look at him. The lanky, curly-haired man on the ground looked petrified, backs of his hands practically pinned to the dirt, eyes flitting madly on his stubbly, bloody-nosed face. Jackie’s wide eyes shot to the object lying two feet from the man’s open hand. He picked the small grey box up.

“An electromagnetic field reader?” he murmured, puzzled. Dean looked back at the downed man, one arm pointing his chi-weapon while the other was ready to grab something else from his pocket.

“I-I come in peace,” the downed man groaned, looking towards Dean. “I-I saw your tech’s green lights in the car – there’s no EM, but it was there. I-I’m sorry, I just-I had to see!”

“ _Who do you think we are_?” Uncle inquired in a high-pitched tone, stepping forward between Dean and Jade.

“You were in Roswell, then in Phoenix in ‘97!” the man continued stammering. Sighing slightly, Jackie shared a look with Jade and Dean – Dean’s former dark air seemed to be deflating from his shoulders, while Jade looked exasperated. “Government’s been coverin’ you up for years, right, letting you live among us?” Suddenly, the bloody-nosed man screwed his eyes and sobbed loudly: “Oh, God, _ple-hease_! I have a sister, and a niece!”

“Okay, take it easy, pal,” Dean quickly tried to placate the man, pleasantly surprising Jackie; “we’re not gonna hurt you or take you. Just… don’t go looking for aliens anymore.”

“If he is not the demon…” Jackie murmured quietly. He was cut off as thunder clapped, sudden and violent, making him snap his head towards its source. Overhead, a black thundercloud marred the otherwise-bright sky, partially peeking over the trees’ tops in a diagonal direction from the road.

“I think we can play follow-the-storm to find Tchang Zu,” Jade murmured, hers and Jackie’s eyes wide as thunder further boomed and broiled.

Blue lightning-bolts flowed in a concentrated column to the blackened sky, thunder booming ominously again before the thundercloud lit up.

Tchang Zu lowered his skyward-pointed arm, the human-demon clad in a moss-green military jacket and black combat pants – he clenched his fists and tossed his head, which was long but had a very compact jaw and shock-white spiky hair, in a furious bellow. Thunder crashed and lightning flashed, illuminating half of the picnic spot behind Tchang, his element singing with his blood as he revelled in his own fury. He’d been positively surprised at his magic’s improved influence in this alternate universe – he’d never been able to form a storm so _intimately-connected_ to his will like this before. A human but reverberating growl rose in his throat as he looked ahead, eyes burning red. Tchang Zu’s current form was broad-shouldered and well-built, like a smaller version of his lost true form; his face had a giant, blotchy nose, his ears were large, and cruel lines characterised his rough-looking lips as he scowled. He glared at the city sprawled beyond the grass and tree-stubbed hill that rolled away in front of him.

“My lightning will turn this city’s people to ash,and those who survive shall _quail at the sound of my thunder evermore_!” Tchang Zu snarled in his growling voice, yelling the sentence’s end-part furiously – blue lightning crackled on his body, but didn’t damage his clothes. Tilting his head again, Tchang Zu brought both hands together, and a new lightning-torrent shot some thirty or forty feet upward. Soon, Tchang Zu’s thunderstorm would be ready to strike down every metal conductor in the city, explode every combustible piece of technology and strike its heathen populace. Already, the picture in the demon’s mind could’ve made him hum and grin.

The Ford, climbing the winding dirt road, braked to a stop – on the side of the car facing the overhead mountain ridge, Jackie rolled down his window, thunder crashing violently and wind assaulting his long hair.

“We’re not driving up there,” Dean murmured, all of them seeing the vertical blue lightning-beam shoot into the black thundercloud. The terrain between them and the diagonal ridge-top was rugged with grass and rocks.

“Then it’s time for a hike,” Jade murmured, eyebrows low as she and Jackie threw open their doors, Dean promptly doing the same. They were advancing off the road’s side among the wild grass, Dean removing his handgun-

“ _AI YA_!” Uncle shrieked – Jade turned around and Jackie looked over his shoulder, seeing the old man yelling directly into Dean’s face by the car hood. “You bring bullets instead of important magic weaponry?!”

“I want something I know how to use if I lose your _important magic_!” Dean snapped back, opening his jacket to show the petrified opossum tucked in his inside-jacket pocket. Uncle held his chin briefly, and Jade barely heard his thoughtful hum over the wind and a sudden thunder-rumble.

“That is _good thinking_ …” Uncle murmured. Jade had already resumed her ascent, and was about to call to Jackie to keep up when Uncle yelled; “ _Jackie!_ _WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG_?!” Jackie promptly resumed just behind Jade.

It took the group twenty minutes to find the lightning-beams’ source – it wasn’t hard, as they continued firing in bursts every couple minutes, causing the growing thundercloud to flash and broil. Jade led the way up a steep wooded incline, Dean just behind her. Compared to the blue-skied town, the wooded landscape was disturbingly shadowed and grim between lightning-flashes.

Reaching the incline’s top, Jade motioned with an arm for everyone behind her to stop. She had a clear view of the picnic area through the shrubs and trees, dotted with a couple picnic tables. Near where the land curved downwards to a view of the town, a man with wild, shock-white hair stood angularly with his back facing them, arms raised and elbows bet, a bright lightning-flash occurring as Jade noticed him. From his posture, his solitary presence, and the light skin which matched the other demons’ Asian human forms, Jade was certain this was the real Thunder Demon. Turning back to Dean, she put a finger to her lips for silence, then pointed towards the clearing.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” she whispered.

Tchang Zu grinned, lips and teeth parted as thunder constantly broiled and rumbled, hands raised. His storm didn’t need much longer, just a few more minutes…

“ _Hey_!” Tchang Zu spun, teeth grit. He saw the jeans- and jacket-clad Caucasian man run forth from the trees and halt in the open, glaring. The Thunder Demon didn’t grace him with a verbal response, quickly forming a yellow-and-blue lightning-ball and throwing. The wide-eyed human dodged sideways, the blast scorching the ground black where he’d stood. Tchang Zu had already formed another lightning-blast. “ _Is throwing lightning all you got_?! _Where’s your honour, huh_?!” The Thunder Demon paused mid-throw, listening _very_ -seriously. “ _Come on, one-on-one, you and me_!” The human moved his ready-for-scuffling-arms with eagerness. Lined lips curled and teeth grit, Tchang Zu locked gazes with the human as he fired a lightning-torrent skyward. The thundercloud gave its greatest rumble and brightest flash yet, and Tchang Zu didn’t need to look to know the rolling thunderheads’ speed was increasing. He marched towards the insolent. Brave or mad, if this human wanted a warrior’s death then the Thunder Demon would deliver.

Coming within three feet, Tchang Zu swung the first punch – the unmoving human dodged his head and shoulders, grabbing Tchang’s sleeve-clad forearm and arm-dragging him closer. The human demon only moved two steps before deflecting the mortal’s arm, forcing it to arc as he grabbed it before arm-dragging the human to him. He moved his other arm to try ensnaring the mortal in a neck-breaking headlock, but he deflected it and punched Tchang Zu’s gut hard. The Thunder Demon grunted, staggering backwards a step, then growled. Yelling a war cry, he aimed a roundhouse kick at his opponent’s head. The human _just_ dodged backwards out of the kick’s range, but Tchang Zu followed with a wheel kick as he jumped – his boot made very-audible contact with the human’s head, knocking him straight to the grass. Upper-lip curled, Tchang Zu didn’t pause for more than a second before marching to the belly-down body. Stopping over the human, and faintly smelling the blood leaking from his nose, the demon-in-human-form grabbed the mortal’s shirt. Suddenly, the human kicked out at Tchang Zu’s kneecap, making him grunt loudly – it couldn’t break the cap, but it still forced his leg out, making him fall to his knee. The human rolled onto his back and kicked out directly at Tchang Zu’s squashed nose – the demon’s head snapped back and he fell backwards. A hoarse groan escaped Tchang Zu’s throat as he lay in a dazed state, brown eyes snapping open after less than two seconds. Beginning to get up, he saw the human crawling on his rear away from him. Baring his teeth savagely, the humanised Thunder Demon shrugged off the dissipating pain in his kneecap. He marched forwards, while the human continued crawling backwards. Tchang Zu’s boots were a yard from stepping on the human’s, when the man suddenly scrambled up and tackled Tchang Zu’s midsection, yelling – the demon-in-human-form cried out in surprise. They both fell, thunder crashing just as Tchang hit the grass. Yelling as lightning flashed more erratically, the bloody-faced mortal was atop the Thunder Demon, and swung a punch aimed at his humanised face – Tchang Zu got up enough to angle his torso and perform an inside block, before punching with his other arm at the man’s chest-middle. The human flew seven feet through the air, landing with a grunt.

Growling viciously, Tchang Zu climbed to his feet again. Before he could move to quickly finish the human, something new tickled his humanised skin the wrong way – eyes turning red, he heard the impossibly-familiar incantation being quickly-recited, turning his white-haired head…

“ _YAAARGH_!” the leaping woman yelled, leg aimed in a flying kick. Ready this time, Tchang Zu pivoted his shoulders so she just shot past and landed in a crouch ten feet from him. When she whipped her head round, Tchang recognised her face.

“ _Yumoguigwaifaidizao_ , _yumoguigwaifaidizao_ -”

“ _YEEAAAARGHHH_!” Tchang Zu exploded with fury to the heavens, causing thunder to crash. He quickly conjured a lightning-torrent and fired rightwards. The sweater-clad man grabbed the scrawny old human and leapt diagonally into the clearing, a split-second before lightning struck behind them. Large flames rose from the scorched spot’s vegetation as Tchang Zu lowered his hand, murderous eyes turning to glare at-

The chi-less human had begun reaching inside his jacket, crouched on the ground. Tchang Zu whirled on him, teeth bared – so much for an honourable fight from that one. He promptly fired lightning, which the battered human leapt to avoid.

“ _Jackie! The lamp_!” The old man yelled urgently. Glancing back at them, Tchang Zu saw Chan and the chi-wizard were scanning the grass urgently – the human demon spotted the green-glowing bronze object one second before Chan did. He immediately formed lightning between both hands and threw it – leaping above the object’s spot, Chan swiped it as he passed over, a split-second before blue lightning-bolts blasted the ground, also catching on and setting fire to the near picnic table.

“ _Bad day,-bad day,-bad day_!” Chan screamed as he ran horizontally of the Thunder Demon, two more lightning-torrents barely missing him. Tchang Zu raised his lightning-filled palm-

“ _ARGH_!” Good-chi magic suddenly blasted him and instantly dampened his strength, lightning seeming to dissipate as it crackled weakly. He was slowly forced to his knees.

“I prefer to cheat,” the Chan woman’s light, mocking voice came from behind Tchang Zu’s back. Tchang Zu clenched his teeth, eyes screwed shut, growl escaping him as he concentrated – as his red-glowing eyes opened, a white lightning-torrent shot vertically down upon him, its light completely beating back the green. Tchang vaguely heard the woman cry out as the lightning shot back along her green beam and blasted her weapon from her hand. The unknown human added his chi-weapon’s beam, but Tchang Zu vaguely felt a tickle before the thunder-magic likewise fed back to his weapon.

“ _Jackie_!” the chi-wizard yelled, looking halfway across the field at Jackie Chan holding the lamp. “ _We must quickly imprison Tchang Zu_!” That was all Tchang Zu needed to hear – he promptly threw another lightning-torrent. Chan saw it coming, eyes bulging a split-second before he leapt clear of the space between Tchang and the overlook, the lightning-beam firing outward and disappearing – a couple seconds before the spreading thundercloud and the town were connected by a lightning fork.

In the town, a second lightning strike promptly hit – humans were running in panic, and a third lightning-bolt struck down a running man.

From the mountain, Tchang saw the fourth lightning-bolt instantly conjure the orange blotch of a fire on the town’s landscape, before another triggered the yellow orb and distant boom of something volatile exploding.

“You are _too late_!” Tchang Zu growled, turning back to his foes. The woman and Jackie Chan were staring in horror, before Chan joined the bloody-faced white man in glaring daggers. “Now I _shall DESTROY YOU ALL_!” Tchang formed lightning between his raised palms and threw.

“ _Yumoguigwaifaidizao-yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …”

The woman had skirted around Tchang Zu to Chan and the wizard, sprinting as she raised her snail-shell to intercept the lightning-torrent. The chi-wizard was sitting meditatively and rapidly chanted over the thunder, while Chan remained crouched and holding out the glowing object. Attention on them, Tchang Zu didn’t notice the bloody-faced man until his chi-weapon fired – the demon-in-human-form diverted one hand and a blue lightning-torrent clashed with the green beam feet away.

“… _yumoguigwaifaidizao-yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …”

Jackie Chan and the lightning-blocking woman were adding to the chant. Grimacing savagely, Tchang Zu cut off both lightning-blasts to stretch his arms skyward, summoning a vertical lightning-torrent from the heavens. Arcs shot off at the ground around Tchang in a protective cage, one arc coming close to blasting the white man’s chi-weapon before he cut the beam.

“… _yumoguigwaifaidizao-yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …”

Thunder crashed very-violently, Tchang Zu’s red-eyed head tilted as lightning-bolts arced between his raised hands, so intense that a pure-white orb was forming.

“… _yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …”

Thunder-crash.

“… _yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …”

Tchang Zu’s glowing eyes narrowed.

“… _yumoguigwaifaidizao-yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …!”

The green lightning-bolt fired from Chan’s object. It hit the protective lightning-cage, green mingling among bright-blue, then it broke through.

“ _Argh_!” Tchang Zu cried out, and a blinding white flash erupted between his hands.

_BOOOOM!_

Tchang Zu’s lightning shot out in every direction in a dazzling display. The shockwave threw every human five feet backwards, though Chan’s green lightning-bolt wasn’t broken. Then the demon’s lightning radiated outward in a ring, light bending at its outer-edge before it travelled beyond a certain distance toward the horizon. Lightning forked from a distant white cloud.

“ _NOOOOOOOOOOOOO_ -!” Tchang Zu bellowed at the top of his voice as green wisps travelled in a vortex to and began encaging him. His human enemies glared.

Just like at the motel, there was a flash, then the vortex-cocoon shrank and withdrew towards the lamp. The vortex shot wholly back in and Jackie groaned, rubbing his head. Thunder growled in subsidence, and Dean spared a look at Jackie, then looked out at the picnic spot’s town-view with them. The thunderheads were receding, but there were more than half-a-dozen small orange fires visible on the town, and the far-off echo of emergency sirens.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dean growled as he turned, mouth tangy with his blood.

“What about the fire?” Jackie asked, stopping him. Thanks to Tchang Zu’s earlier lightning-blast, a ten-foot space of the trees and shrubs was a pyrotechnics show of worsening flames. Dean paused, then removed his flip-phone and put it by his ear.

“I’d like to report a forest fire. Bridger Range, outside of Bozeman.” He hung up without another word, then moved with the Chans around the burning vegetation and into the wood.

Finn and Ratso browsed with their goon-ish type’s typical carelessness through the woody store’s bookshelf, tossing books over their shoulders to the floor. Across the store, Drago held a sample of the bright-green stalks from the jar he was holding to his nose and sniffed.

“Ah!” He grinned dangerously. “Angelica root. Unless this is _also_ nothing?” He turned to the gagged ginger woman behind the register, hands bound behind her chair’s back-rest as she glared defiantly at him. “Your anti-demon security was shoddier than I was expecting for someone who deals with hunters.” He dropped the root back in the jar, smirking. In another corner of the wiccan shop, glass was crashing violently as Chow was looking through a shelf of glass jars. “Just one _devil’s trap_ on your doorstep? No guards in case a demon climbed through your window? No nothing?” Drago chuckled, but it sharply turned to a gasp as his eyes widened and flashed all-red – a tingle of home, if by home one meant his original universe, had just rolled over him, conjuring in the pit of Drago’s eye an image of one of his uncles.

“Thunder Demon magic,” he murmured, frowning slightly. This was interesting.

“We have the ingredients you demanded, master,” Hak Foo rasped, the well-built Enforcer stepped towards Drago with several ingredients under one arm.

“Good,” Drago said coolly, before shooting the shop-owner a mocking grin. “Please, keep the change.” He blew smoke-wisps out of his nostrils, his bodily fire-generator kicking into gear as the Enforcers stared over in some shock. The gagged woman’s glare was still defiant, even if Drago saw the lamb-like terror that humans always had in their eyes when about to die. His open mouth glowed with orange light and he let loose.

A scream and crackling like of firewood came from the street shop, bright-orange light flickering through the display windows; below the ‘ELMERS’ WICCAN CHARMS AND HERBS’ wall-bracket sign.

Dean wasn’t sure why he was re-entering the lock-up shed with Jackie, Jade and Uncle, since he wasn’t currently in a mood to be around something evil that he couldn’t punch in the face. Maybe he was hoping Hsi Wu would give him the excuse. Dean saw Hsi Wu’s creepy-mouthed face was near-blank and eyes all-red in concentration, while Tohru was sitting with a book in hand – the bespectacled sumo’s eyes were half-lidded until he turned his head at their approach.

“Jade. Uncle.” Tohru said; before Hsi Wu’s eyes resumed their human appearance, looking interested. Jackie and Jade looked slightly battered, but for Dean it was a day at the office. “Did you defeat the Thunder Demon?”

“We did,” Uncle murmured, voice slightly quiet. Then he addressed Hsi Wu. “Have you located the next demon?”

“I’m almost there,” he murmured mischievously, then suddenly leaned back in his chair-prison, smiling from ear to ear. “But perhaps we should talk about you, your family and your friend, dear Uncle.” Dean swore the demon-sorcerer would’ve joined his fingertips like an evil chairman if his arms weren’t bound. “Did my brother put up a fight?”

“What do you care?” Jade spat, arms crossed, while Dean turned his head as he heard Sam entering the storage room behind them.

“It must be a tasty story to have rattled your cage,” Hsi Wu murmured tauntingly, wide grin re-plastered on his face. Jade merely glared daggers, while the human demon hummed thoughtfully. “Both your uncles obviously walked away with their lives. Did my brother destroy someone else?” Dean was about five seconds from wiping that look off Hsi Wu’s face, when Jade suddenly pounced.

_WHACK!_

The punch knocked Hsi Wu’s chair clean backwards to the floor. Jade slowly stalked forward, face calm but dark in a way Dean didn’t like, while Jackie and Tohru seemed too surprised to immediately act. Grabbing a fistful of the chair-bound Sky Demon’s hair, Jade hauled him back into an upright position, his bloody nose half-a-foot from her face.

“I’m really not in the mood for games,” Jade murmured.

“But _I_ am,” Hsi Wu responded quickly, grinning. “You’re not a grown-up among demons until you’ve watched someone perish in torment.”

“ _Jade_!”

“Jade!” Dean marched forward, grabbing Jade’s shoulder and spinning her to face him. Her anger-wild eyes looked surprised for a moment.

“If he knows where the next demo-”

“Jade,” Tohru’s deep voice cut her off as he stepped forward. “You should get some air. We’ll handle Hsi Wu.” His calm voice was soothing yet wouldn’t be refused – for a split-second, part of Dean envied Jade having someone like that. Her eyes shifted back to Dean’s as though checking if he had any argument. He didn’t, so she slightly shrugged his hand off, then wordlessly marched past him. As she passed Sam, he looked in concern after her, then with a glance back at the room, went after her. Turning back to their captive, Dean’s face was mercilessly cold.

“Where’s the next demon-sorcerer?”

Jade leaned against the wall outside the lock-up, eyes closed as she breathed in, then out. Jackie had used breathing technique to lower stress or anger, and she’d heard more of it during her college years, but she’d never really used it before now. Opening her eyes, she looked ahead at the sight beyond the building exterior’s overhead lights, which were off in the daylight.

“Hey.” She turned her head as Sam stepped out. “You okay?”

“Obviously not,” she murmured, reflecting on how she’d snapped, before breathing in and out again. “Hopefully I will be in a minute.” She repeated the breathing technique – she wasn’t happy at all that she’d let Hsi Wu get to her like that – and Sam was looking at her as if contemplating something.

“You wanna to talk about it?” he said gently but not too gently. Jade took about two seconds to decide and she sighed. Talking probably would help her get her senses back.

“The Thunder Demon blasted the town a couple times before we got him in the can,” Jade said. “I saw him turn a bunch of people to smithereens.” She crossed her arms. “I guess it doesn’t sit with me well. I’ve fought demons that killed a few people and tried to kill more, but this is the first time a demon managed to kill dozens on my watch. We were fighting him when he did it, and those people were destroyed because we weren’t faster. You know?” She looked at him, and Sam lowered his eyes.

“I don’t think I do,” he murmured. Jade’s lips shifted at the corners – she hadn’t been expecting that answer. “I mean… me and Dean, we catch wind of a missing person or a weird death, we go looking to kill the thing that did it.” He added after a pause, “More often than not, they kill more people before we find it and gank it. It’s been that way since we were kids.”

“How do you deal with it?” Jade asked softly. A pause followed – from the way Sam stared off, he looked like he was searching for the answer himself.

“If I’d been asked that four years ago, I’d have said grow up and move on,” he murmured. Jade smirked – that she could sympathise with. “If you’d asked me when I didn’t have a soul…” He snorted and grinned mirthlessly. “Me and Dean, we’ve done a lot of good, and we’ve done a lot of bad.” That also surprised Jade – Sam and Dean had struck her as the rough-round-the-edges,-okay-with-stealing-candy type, but not as former bad guys, like the way Sam spoke made her think. “But…” His hazel eyes met Jade’s. “…we kill the monster before it kills anyone else. I think that’s what matters, you know?”

Jade smiled, and said quite honestly, “That I think I can live with.” Sam smiled back. The sound of heavy footsteps drew both their gazes as Tohru exited the building beside them, turning his torso to fit through the doorframe.

“Is everything alright?” Tohru asked, very considerate.

“Peachy, T,” Jade said, smiling. “Any news?”

Tohru nodded. “Hsi Wu has revealed the next demon’s location.”


	13. Detour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo, I’ve split the Wind Demon encounter into two chapters because of the length it’d be if it were just one.

**Southwestern Iowa**

The Audi Quattro shot along the meadow-adjacent country road.

“So there’s next to nothing on Prince Lan from _Bhutan_?” Dean said in the driver’s seat, while Jade and Jackie were leaning forward into the car’s front.

“Not on the web,” Sam murmured next to Dean, laptop sandwiched between him and the dashboard. “It’s like the guy just popped out of thin air two weeks ago.” He shifted the laptop so Jade and Jackie could see. “This is the only picture there is of him.” A picture of a central grainy figure sandwiched between two others, with a long head and bun of dark hair, and he alone in the picture had a translucent green blotch on him that seemed to curve with his silhouette.

“And the guy avoids the press,” Jade murmured. “ _Tch_. No surprise there.” A twinkle of light caught her eye’s corner, coming from opposite her in the backseat – Jackie, sandwiched between Jade’s rear and Uncle, saw it on Uncle and gasped.

“Uncle!” he exclaimed. Uncle’s pants pocket was glowing chi-green.

“ _Ai ya_!” the skinny old man exclaimed in shock, eyes wide, while Sam glanced back. To Jade’s surprise, Uncle extracted from his glowing pocket a green-glowing grey tuft, holding it up near his beady eyes.

“Guys?” Dean grunted, not taking his eyes off the road.

“Your old demon-detection spell?!” Jade exclaimed, fully retracting into the backseat.

“But, how is that possible?” Jackie said.

“A _demon-sorcerer is near_ …” Uncle murmured with his airy ominousness, looking at the tuft which levitated a few inches above his hand. The tuft rotated horizontally with a rusted cog’s speed, until it was pointing sideways to Uncle, and a conical bright-green chi-beam shone upwards from the thing, solid lines drawing themselves to form a three-dimensional drawing.

“Crap,” Dean grunted quietly, pulling the Audi over and stopping it, though Jade kept her eyes on the projection. The lines were forming a human rather than demon upper-body shape, just like the only two times the Chans had used the spell – a practically neckless figure with a crooked, wide smile and balding head.

“It is Xiao Fung, the Wind Demon!” Uncle said. As a kid, Jade had briefly seen this demon-sorcerer disguised as a human, and the Asian man’s image looked strikingly similar save for the hair. After a couple seconds, the human demon’s light-line visage dissolved, and the outline of the North American continent materialised, two light-specks glowing inside the continent’s eastern half – a red speck representing their current location, and a green speck representing the demon’s, barely two centimetres apart on the image. Then the image dissolved again, to a fade-bordered helicopter view of flat land, its only features being grey dirt roads, two wind turbines, and a third turbine without any blades installed.

“The Wind Demon’s at a wind farm?” Jade murmured, surprised.

“Maybe he likes how _windy_ it is there?” Jackie suggested jokingly, and Jade could’ve groaned with a smile at the awful pun. The magic hair-tuft’s projection dissolved.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean murmured.

“Okay, so we’ve got a Carpenter-ghoul holed up in Florida, and the Wind Demon at a wind farm here in Iowa,” Sam summarised their situation.

“What are you thinking?” Jade asked.

“Wind Demon’s closer,” Sam said, glancing back at her. “We can take a detour, then head to NASA.”

“I agree,” Jackie murmured.

“Uncle?” Jade and Jackie asked simultaneously as they both looked towards the same side of the backseat.

“Uncle’s legs are getting _big cramp_!” the skinny old man complained, holding one bent leg. “ _Why are we sitting on side of road_?!” Jade chewed the inside of her cheek slightly. She could nearly sense Dean rolling his eyes as he pulled the Audi away from the roadside again.

* * *

Mechanical whirring filled the air as the crane’s winch slowly lifted the white blade towards the nacelle, two of the turbine’s rotor hubs currently empty. In the crane’s ground-based cabin, Mac’s head was craned as he guided the crane’s arm by joystick – the cargo reached its required height with a loud _thunk_ , then he shifted a joystick to guide the rotor blade into its slot. Halfway through, Mac was startled by a knock on the cabin’s glass on his side, another worker in grey overalls behind the glass – he signalled to his right with a gloved hand somewhat-impatiently to say it was lunch break, and Mac raised an index finger for one more minute before the fellow crewman departed. Mac’s bosses would be pretty peeved if he just left their work getting that rotor blade in.

Forty-five seconds later, Mac was striding less-than-straight-backed down the dull, low hill, hard hat dangling from one hand – ten of the other fourteen workers on the afternoon shift were already digging into their lunchboxes atop a crane’s wheel-rim, most with hard hats still on. Mac soon sat his arse on the rim’s far end, lunchbox in hand, grunting from how much his bones ached before he chewed off half a sandwich.

“I got an extra chicken leg if you want an extra snack?” the young guy sitting next to Mac murmured with a mouthful, to the next guy sitting along.

“No thank you, Steve,” the short-necked next man along declined with his soft, tomcat-like voice, raising a hand.

“You sure, Chow?”

“Certainly – that would be spoiling myself.” Sometimes, Mac wondered how a guy like Mr. Chow Fung wasn’t alienated from the rest of the crew for being a snob – he certainly had the voice and vocabulary for it. He was a rather short but heavily-built man, the giant size of his forearms compared to his arms above the elbow making him appear slightly-deformed. Mac didn’t like the smirks or grins he often wore on his crooked-lipped mouth, as it looked like he was sneering on everyone. Chow’s face, though not exactly attractive, didn’t even scream of a fellow worker with the _smart_ way he narrowed his far-apart eyes under his thick brows, nor his small, candelabra-like goatee that seemed constantly-trimmed. Mac leaned slightly forward at the sounds of nearby commotion to peer past his fellows, the same direction Chow was looking in.

“Crap,” he murmured with a mouthful at the sight ahead – in front of the nearby trailer, the overalls- and hard hat-clad project manager was shouting and pointing with his back to the rest of the crew, the source of his rants being some other engineer at the outdoor table, looking at the blueprints. “The hell’s Grady rantin’ about now?”

“As deputy engineer, I will ask,” Chow purred lightly, dropping his sandwich back in its box without looking, removing himself from atop the wheel-rim and immediately marched straight ahead.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about you needing to take a crap, Henderson, I wanna know why the turbines we’ve built don’t match up with these plans!” Grady was snapping at his shouting-receptacle as Xiao Fung strode towards them, wide-cheeked human face impassive. Grady turned his head when the human Wind Demon was about twelve feet away.

“Chow, did you know about this?!” he exclaimed.

“That depends on what the problem is,” Xiao Fung purred suavely, his voice lacking its demonic gurgle in his current form.

“Fine, I’ll tell you what the problem is!” Grady all but barked, eyes wide, before promptly returning his gaze to the blueprints and pointing, Xiao Fung’s shifting gaze neutral and impassive. “This right here is what a standard American gearbox is supposed to look like!” He turned his head. “You’ve seen the gearboxes we’ve been lifting up into those things, can you tell me they’re an identical match to these blueprints?!”

Xiao Fung hummed in false brooding, then he put a hand’s four fingertips on four different points. “There should be four components-”

“They’re on the gearboxes, but they aren’t on the blueprints!” Grady cut him off. “And the manufacturers tell me the gearboxes were exactly like this down to the _last screw_ when they were dispatched!”

“Can I see the other blueprints?” Xiao Fung murmured levelly, meeting Grady’s gaze. A pause passed before Grady responded, turning and marching towards the trailer, grumbling to himself.

“Don’t see what good that is… I said I’ve already contacted…” Xiao Fung followed behind the human, as the sad man no doubt expected the one he thought were his underling to. Grady threw the work trailer’s door open and stormed in, Xiao Fung following behind him. Blinds filtering the daylight entering through the cramped workspace’s only window. Approaching the scroll-stocked shelf, Grady removed his hard hat, exposing the bald spot that served as proof of his overworked, high-strung state. Looking Grady up and down, Xiao Fung smirked slowly while his human prey was removing scrolled-up blueprints.

Grady spoke as he turned round, “Let’s see what these blueprints have to-” He was cut off when Xiao Fung shut the door one-handed, dark-brown eyes unblinking. “What the hell are you doing?” Xiao Fung, with the same hand that had shut the door, turned the key in it – he no longer restrained the urge to quickly lick his lips with his large tongue.

“Out with the old, Mr. Grady,” Xiao Fung purred, grinning widely as he took the first couple small steps forward. “As the deputy engineer, I cannot allow an _unfit_ leader to make a mess of it.” Grady’s face blanched with his surprise, far from the fastest human to react. Xiao Fung didn’t give further warning before he suddenly lunged with a burst of inhuman speed, knocking Grady back with a little sound. In less than a second, Grady’s grunts and groans quickly turned to muffled shrieks as he was eaten alive, a spray of blood splattering the trailer wall near the window, then another spray with bits of flesh and gore in it.

* * *

The waitress strode over to the booth occupied by five, placing down each of the four plates and the drink on the tray she was balancing, and one of the table’s occupants grinned charmingly as he thanked her before she moved on.

“Anything on any wind farms in Iowa?” Jade asked Sam, whose eyes were glued to his laptop’s screen as he typed, while Dean bit into his extra-large burger.

“Yeah,” Sam replied, voice none too hopeful. “Actually, there are about five wind-power farms getting new turbines installed across as many counties.”

“That’s helpful,” Jade murmured, eating soup and a burrito alongside her chi-mung bean sandwich.

“We will need more than that if we are to find the Wind Demon,” Jackie murmured, wearing a cap with a hood drawn over it, per Dean’s insistence that a cap alone wouldn’t stop someone from recognising him in this universe. After all, Dean and Sam still got people once in a while who briefly thought they were ‘ _those interstate serial killers_.’

“Right,” Sam said, raising two fingers while reading from the screen; “but only _two_ of them are new farms that are just getting set up.” He lifted his eyes to look at the other two people across the table, Uncle putting down his chi-mung bean sandwich. “The wind farm the tracking spell showed looked like it was just getting set up. It’s something.” While his brother was speaking, Dean craned his head slightly to read the webpage’s contents just for the heck of it.

“It says one of them’s being made by a big-ass company. Richard Roman Enterprises doesn’t have anything to do with that, does it?” Chewing delicious bacon cheeseburger – and hoping its succulence wouldn’t be ruined by bad news – Dean met his brother’s eyes at the last sentence.

“No,” Sam said, looking back at the screen. “It’s funded by a green-energy big-shot, those guys and Richard Roman Enterprises – they’re like evil and good Transformers.”

“Decepticons and Autobots.”

“Whatever.”

“There is nothing natural or non-magic about a _farm which milks electricity out of windmills with udders_!” Uncle insisted in an indoors but high, almost wail-like voice, raising his arms like there were insects crawling on him. Dean stifled a laugh which sent a few bits of food spraying from his mouth.

“That… isn’t what a wind farm is, Uncle,” Jackie said hesitantly, while Jade was smiling.

“Where’s the nearest of the two?” Jade asked.

“About twenty miles from here – just outside Orient,” Sam murmured.

“Let’s go check out Old McDonald’s Wind-Farm,” Dean murmured through a mouthful, and didn’t see the disapproving look his brother shot him. “As soon as I finish this delicious thing.”

* * *

The crew moved about the under-construction wind farm, the Audi standing parked on the opposite side of the two-lane asphalt on the other side of the site’s fence. Sam was leaning against the Audi’s side opposite the farm per Jade’s suggestion, turning his head left and right to look like he were admiring the countryside’s views. The lenses of Jackie’s binoculars were an inch from the glass of the Audi’s side-window as he surveyed the farm.

“I do not see Xiao Fung’s human face,” he murmured, shifting his binoculars.

“Same with me,” Jade deadpanned, sitting opposite Dean in the passenger’s seat, scanning with her cellphone’s viewfinder. So far, the app on the screen showed nothing but ordinary, slightly-dirty construction workers in uniform mulling about the site, transporting turbine parts and getting them installed as Jade shakily panned.

“Guy’s looking, act natural,” Dean quickly deadpanned, turning his head in a stunned-horror kind of way to look out the windshield, while Jade immediately lowered her cellphone and looked at it like its screen were the most interesting object in the world. They stayed that way for little over five seconds, before Dean turned his head back and Jade re-raised her cellphone.

“ _Ai ya_! Uncle needs use of lavatory!” The old coot in the backseat exclaimed, making Jackie wince.

“But Uncle! Why did you not use the lavatory when we were at the restaurant?”

“How could I go to lavatory when I was sandwiched between you and window?” the old Chinese man retorted, and Jackie groaned. Nothing more was said for a few seconds while Jade continued scanning. She tracked onto the back of the workers’ trailer just as a humanoid green blob walked past its further corner into view.

“Whoa. Green chi, one o’clock.” Jackie raised his binoculars, spying the stout workman who was apparently wiping his hands clean and dropping the cloth in a waste-bin, before he marched towards a couple other workers.

“Xiao Fung,” Jackie murmured after a moment’s pause assessing the figure’s features, lowering the binoculars.

“You got him?” Sam asked outside, turning his head around.

“Yep,” Jade confirmed, frowning with Jackie.

“Will that lamp work from here?” Dean asked.

“The demon must be in range for the lamp to locate and imprison it,” Uncle replied, holding up the bronze lamp.

“Alright, I say me and Sam put on a couple Bob the Builder jumpsuits, we get in with Uncle, wait ‘til the son of a bitch is alone and Jafar him into the lamp,” Dean murmured.

There was a briefly-brief pause in which Jackie looked over at Dean before the archaeologist said, “No, that’s not good enough.”

“Dean,” Sam said, leaning in through the open front window, “the moment this guy recognises Uncle or Jackie or Jade, he’ll either make a run or grab a human hostage.”

“Crap,” Dean sighed quietly. “Then what?”

“We can wait and watch ‘til the shift finishes and he leaves, we see where he goes, then we tag him and bag,” Sam replied.

“What if Xiao Fung decides to hurt someone?” Jackie asked behind Dean’s seat, not too happy with that plan.

“Then I’ll improvise,” Dean all but barked. Jackie practically frowned with his eyes at the back of Dean’s seat, and Jade couldn’t say she didn’t like that plan either – Uncle said nothing, observing with arms crossed.

Time ticked by – for Jade, the hours went by at breakneck pace, but Dean and Sam watched diligently. So when Jade was confident Sam and Dean would keep their eyes out, she took to using the games apps on the cellphone Dean had given her. Afternoon transitioned to evening. When night fell, Jade had quit playing game apps lest she get too engorged and resumed watching the wind farm, elbow resting on her side’s car door. Jackie was reading a book while Uncle was lying against the younger man’s side, peacefully snoring.

“Aw, ain’t he a little angel,” Dean remarked sarcastically, before raising the binoculars he’d taken off Jackie to his eyes. Not a second passed before he spoke again. “Hey.” Jade perked up slightly, and Jackie turned his head.

“What is it?” Sam asked, looking diagonally at Dean from the backseat.

“It looks like it’s closing time,” Dean murmured, watching with Jade. The humanised Wind Demon was climbing into an old, beat-up Toyota Stout. “Either that, or the Wicked Wizard of the East is going home early.” The Stout’s headlights activated among the other parked vehicles, and it began pulling out through the open gateway in the fence onto the road, then turned towards the hunters and Chan Clan’s car.

“ _Act-natural_!” Jade hissed quickly, all but bumping her shoulder against her side-door and drawing her short black hair over her face to look like she was dozing, while Jackie quickly buried his face behind his book, and Uncle continued snoring peacefully. Headlamp-light filled the Audi interior and intensified, then sharply faded away behind them. No sooner Xiao Fung’s truck had passed them, than Dean started grunting words while reeving the car engine on.

“Let’s follow him.”

The Audi U-turned as it pulled away from the roadside and went after Xiao Fung’s vehicle, passing the Orient mile-marker.

“ _Ai ya_! Uncle is moving without use of legs!” A pause followed among the Audi’s occupants as the car kept pace behind the tail-lights of Xiao Fung’s ride, before Dean’s voice grunted briefly in pain.

* * *

The car occupants watched the shack of a hardware store from diagonally across the wide and long road, artificial light from its largely-glass door and display windows lighting the evening. Xiao Fung, who’d shed his work-suit for denim jeans and a plain grey shirt, was visible past the windows’ displays talking to the clerk and slightly waving his selected items.

“…It doesn’t make any sense,” Jade said in the darkness-shrouded car interior. “He could be making a ground-based hurricane.”

“Must be connected to the wind farm,” Sam murdered, leaning forward.

“I don’t know, but let’s just gank this sucker before we find out,” Dean growled. Not a moment later, Xiao Fung pushed out the shop door with a paper bag of purchases in hand, taking no notice of the Audi as he turned his back to it and walked the other way down the street.

“He’s on the move!” Jackie said, moving to push the front seats down, while Dean and Jade were pushing out the side-doors.

“You and Sam distract him while we go round the other side!” Jade barked to Dean as they were moving.

Xiao Fung rounded the corner to where he’d left the pickup truck he’d acquired, car keys in his free hand. He inserted the key in the side door, when the tall man running towards him started yelling.

“Hey, wait! U.S. Marshal!” He fumbled and raised a badge. Xiao Fung stared as the man with neck-length hair approached, the human demon’s far-apart eyes slightly wide. “Sorry, uh… I’m gonna need to see what’s in the bag?” The man paused and fumbled over his words.

“Of course, officer,” Xiao Fung purred, smiling thinly as he reached a corded hand in the bag’s top. The stranger shot an arm at Xiao Fung’s head in a punch. But Xiao gamely countered with an inside-block from the forearm he’d been reaching into the brown bag with, then shot the same arm at the stranger’s face in a palm-strike. He staggered a couple steps backwards from the blow. “Is it normal for a Marshal to do this in your modern world?” Xiao Fung purred tauntingly, baring his humanised teeth in a dark grin – then he tilted his head back, eyes flashing red as he sucked in air fast enough to produce a typhoon-like howl, throat unnaturally inflating just like in his true form. After a second-and-a-half, Xiao Fung exhaled with an explosion of sound. The human was thrown back like a tumbleweed in a desert wind. He flew off the ground away from the exhaling Wind Demon. At the street’s far side beyond the alley, his back crashed into a pair of dustbins left out near the sidewalk. Xiao Fung briefly observed the chi-less mortal’s landing-

_CLANG!_

The blow to Xiao Fung’s head sent him falling forward, his rugged-faced, hazel-eyed assailant standing with a metal pole raised. On his hands and knees, Xiao grimaced, then half-turned towards his attacker while sucking in air. The shorter-haired human grunted and tried to pull backwards from the suction, but was dragged forward with a cry. Xiao Fung stopped inhaling once the human came close enough for him to grab his neck – then the human Wind Demon threw himself forward off his hands and knees, rolling so their positions were reversed, pinning the human with either hand on his neck and wrist. The rugged-featured human was wheezing as he fought desperately for air. Xiao Fung might’ve broken his neck, when something tickled him wrongly – a tinge that didn’t belong in this universe, which made Xiao raise his head slightly, and only then did the monotone chanting deeper inside the alley register. Xiao Fung turned, but didn’t get the chance to look before the long-haired man stood and fired a gun. The bullet hit Xiao Fung’s shoulder, piercing flesh and leaving a hole rimmed with red blood. Gritting his teeth, Xiao Fung glared murderously the other way at the gunman. The chi-tickle increasing and chanting persisting, Xiao Fung hauled up the human below him up as he stood, the grunting mortal’s back shielding Xiao from the gunman’s aim. He spun his torso and his human shield-

“… _yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_!”

-a split-second before the green chi-beam shot from the figures inside the alley’s far end. Blasting into the human shield, who grunted from the blast, before Xiao Fung immediately shoved him away lest the magic on him touch the Wind Demon – the rugged-faced human swung his arm backwards at Xiao Fung, who leaned out of the blow’s range, then retaliated with a spinning kick to the mortal’s head that threw him sideways; all while two more bullets were fired by the gunman into Xiao’s back. The gunman’s weapon started clicking, empty of bullets.

“ _Dammit_!” He ran forward.

Xiao Fung glanced back at the gunman behind him, whilst Jackie Chan and his niece were running at him from in front. The human demon lifted the downed human by a fistful of his shirt and grabbed him in a headlock.

“Come any closer, and I’ll break your friend’s neck!” Xiao Fung snarled warningly at the gunman, before turning his gaze on the Chans who halted – indeed, the Wind Demon’s forearm would snap his hostage’s neck the moment they got too close. The gunman halted in compliance, though his hazel eyes were certainly not defeated. The area around the Wind Demon was relatively silent for a moment, save the sound of his mortal hostage wheezing through Xiao’s crushing grip. The human Wind Demon smiled thinly at the wide-eyed Chan and Jade in the alley, the chi-wizard standing further back. “Jackie Chan. How in the Netherworld did the three of you reach this world’s earthly realm?”

“None of your business,” Chan replied in a contemptible stern voice.

“Hands up, Xiao!” Jade exclaimed defiantly, pointing a finger. “You’re not going anywhere!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure!” Xiao Fung shot back darkly. He didn’t see the human he was holding carefully slipping a hand into his pocket. Suddenly, the rugged human fired a bright-green bolt at Xiao Fung which made him grunt in pain, and the mortal immediately broke free of his hold in the bewilderment. The gunman fired again. The short-haired human fired another chi-blast. The good-chi sent Xiao Fung flying off his feet, out of the alley. The human demon hit the sidewalk’s gravel, eyes blazing red with his irritation, whilst the clerk’s silhouette inside the nearby store moved frantically. The gunman was two metres from Xiao, gun aimed at his brow. Chan was charging forward, yelling. Xiao Fung scowled – he didn’t know what spell Chan’s chi-wizard uncle meant to cast, but he would find out soon with the numbers against him. He quickly sucked in, then unleashed a hurricane-like wind with a thunderclap-like noise. Roaring wind exploded in the mortals’ faces a split-second before they were thrown back. The human demon didn’t cut off the gale there; instead, he lowered his neck so his gust hit the ground. Blowing him backwards. He landed in a graceful crouch a distance down the street, and he didn’t waste a second, sprinting past the bend towards the next street.

Dean grunted as he got up, looking towards where Xiao Fung had gone. Jackie was sprinting down the road, stopping when he saw the demon-sorcerer was nowhere in sight.

“Dammit!” Dean growled.

“It wasn’t gonna be so simple every time…” Jade murmured grimly as she and Sam got up. “What d’you think are the odds he’ll be heading to the wind farm?”

“Hold on a sec,” Sam murmured without looking, legs taking him in his gaze’s direction into the alley. In the alley, Uncle holding the magic lamp was looking at Xiao’s lost shopping bag as Sam approached.

“Demon-sorcerers can be _very_ tricky,” the old Chinese man murmured as Sam picked up the bag while Dean approached.

“What’s in the bag?” Dean murmured.

“Uh…” was Sam’s first response, taking out a pack of screws and what looked like an electronic piece with a metal cylinder that Dean thought belonged in a school lab.

“You don’t know what that crap is?”

“Yeah…” Sam murmured, while Jade was opening the side-door on Xiao Fung’s pickup nearby.

“You got something?” Dean asked Jade.

“Yeah,” she replied, emerging from inside the Stout with a leather-bound journal in hand. She held up the journal, showing Dean the encircled pentagram on the cover.

“Is that a spellbook?” Sam said, as surprised as Dean by the witchy-looking book.

Dean heard Jackie sprinting back towards them, but only turned when the alternate-universe martial-artist spoke. “The shopkeeper is calling the police.”

“Okay. Time to go.” Sam said hurriedly, while Dean was already running to the Stout’s driver’s door and throwing it open, reaching under the wheel to hotwire the thing.

“The chi-sandwiches, they’re still in the other car!” Jade exclaimed, and Jackie audibly groaning before running off.


	14. Touch the Sky

Less than five minutes later, the Stout that had belonged to Xiao Fung was shoot along the country road at night, headlights providing illumination.

“Jade, is there anything in there about what Xiao Fung wants?” Jackie asked at the steering wheel directly next to Jade, who up to now had been quickly reading through the journal’s pages – handwritten mostly in Cantonese except for the illustrated pentagrams and symbol.

“There’s a bunch of spells in here I don’t even recognise,” said the woman, sitting between Jackie and Uncle in the cabin while Sam and Dean’s backs were outside the pickup’s rear window. “And none of them say anything about chi.” Her eyebrows rose as she added, “One more thing – half the spells are Wind Demon-themed.”

“Does the journal describe what Xiao Fung wants?” Uncle asked on Jade’s other side, leaning forward, holding the sandwich-filled rucksack by his chest.

“Nothing in here I’ve seen,” she murmured, flipping through the pages faster. “Hang on…” She stopped at one page. After a second, she said, “Check _this_ out.” Holding up the opened journal for Uncle to see the illustration on one page of a box with a symbol on it.

The pickup couldn’t pull over soon enough for Jade, opposite the fence that had the company billboard with an idyllic bright-coloured wind farm illustration, the site now near-black with the night. Sam was at the driver’s window in a few seconds, looking in at the Chan Clan.

“You find anything in that journal?”

“I think it’s a pretty safe bet that Xiao Fung will be coming back here,” Jade replied.

“Right, well you-” Dean had begun speaking at the opposite window when Uncle next to him sharply shrieked, making Jade wince as she scrunched her eyes.

“ _AI YA_!!!” The old man delivered a two-fingered slap which immediately made Dean cry out and slightly stagger back, head flying to his forehead.

“ _You risk making Uncle’s ancient heart stop_!” Uncle shrieked furiously, patting a hand on his left breast for emphasis. Dean growled irritably. Jade wasn’t sure what would’ve happened, if Sam hadn’t seen the pair of headlights approaching from Orient and called everyone’s attention.

“Hey, guys.”

Jade and Jackie turned their heads, as did Dean thankfully. They saw the headlights swerve off of them as the beige-coloured Ford Mustang pulled into and stopped at the closed site gate on the fencing. As the hunters and Chan Clan observed, the familiar stout figure that got out the driver’s door and advanced to the gates didn’t even seem to look around to check his surroundings before he kicked the padlock-sealed chain-link in.

“Do we have a plan?” Jade murmured, quite uncertain and not liking the idea of charging in guns blazing a second time.

* * *

Xiao Fung strode purposefully to the silo-shaped white structure that rose from the earth, the oval-shaped door waiting for him. The Wind Demon’s broad-mouthed human face was quite neutral, as he wasn’t in all that delighted a mood – after he’d reached this new earthly realm, he’d thought the nemeses of him and his brethren would be a universe away for good to never pester him again. At least, he’d thought that until the Thunder Demon magic shockwave had occurred a couple days ago, so powerful he’d felt it tickle his skin four times as it circled the planet, before it had decayed to the point of being unremarkable. And then his little tussle in town had just happened. That, and Xiao Fung had been fond of the transport he’d left behind, to the point he wondered if he should’ve stood his ground and fought the humans off. Regardless, Xiao Fung was very glad he’d memorised the important spellwork he’d noted down in his journal. If Jackie Chan and his uncle and niece had somehow followed him and his brethren into this reality, and if he was next on their demonic hit-list instead of another demon-sorcerer, he would initiate the first phase of his conquest a little early.

_PCHOW!_

Dark-brown eyes widening, Xiao Fung shifted his torso and shoulders quickly, bright-green chi-bolt shooting past. But he wasn’t quick enough, the bright-green energy catching on his nearest hand’s fingertips, making the human demon cry out as good-chi magic immediately poisoned him – he slumped to his knees on the ground, clutching his bright-green hand preciously, before glaring in the direction the blast had come from. The Wind Demon saw the pointed, bright-glowing snail’s shell, light and wisps of chi-magic like that which had zapped the Wind Demon now glowing off of it – the human Jade Chan was the one holding it gun-like as she glared coolly at the demon-sorcerer, the lamp-holding chi-wizard held in Jackie Chan’s arms next to her as he chanted.

“ _Yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ … _yu mo gui gwai fai di zao_ …”

The lamp’s spout crackled bright-green, making Xiao Fung narrow his eyes and will his muscles harder to move. Slowly, but fortunately not too slowly, the good-chi light and wisps on his large hand faded. Standing up, Xiao Fung didn’t tilt his head as he immediately started sucking air in.

“ _Ai ya_!” the chi-wizard screamed over the howling air-suction which made the Chans’ air blow towards the Wind Demon, the two other Chans shifting their legs as they tried to back-pedal and dig their feet in the ground against the vacuum. Glow fading, the bronze lamp flew from the old man’s hand. Xiao Fung cut off his suction to halt the lamp a foot from his red-eyed, swollen-throated face with one hand. Jackie Chan audibly gasped. The swollen-throated human demon smirked-

_PCHOW!_

“ _Argh_!” Xiao Fung cried out as a new chi-bolt hit him from the side, body slumping with weakened muscles once more. The two strangers stood nearby, the shorter-haired and slightly-closer one lowering his chi-weapon.

“Get the lamp!” Jade Chan exclaimed urgently, before sprinting forward. Xiao Fung opened his dark-brown eyes, glowering menacingly. Coming upon him, the woman attempted a roundhouse kick with a yell – muscles driven to move by sheer will, Xiao Fung’s free hand caught the boot that tried to knock the lamp from his grasp, and he yanked the leg forward. Jade Chan’s body flew towards the glowing demon – who threw a headbutt at her face which made impact with a _crack_ , making the woman fall backwards in the opposite direction. The long-haired chi-less mortal fired his handgun three times, putting three bullet-holes through Xiao Fung’s grey shirt and humanised flesh, though it only served to irritate him further. Jackie Chan, who was just putting his uncle down standing, sprinted forward with a yell. The nemesis of all demonkind leapt, sole aimed at Xiao Fung’s face in a flying kick. When the blow made impact, the crippled human demon was thrown clean backwards. His back slammed hard into the wind turbine’s cylindrical white wall, making him cry out before he slumped on his backside to the ground, the good-chi on him fading. Barely able to keep his eyes open thanks to the chi-spell, Xiao Fung saw Jackie Chan swipe the dull-bronze lamp off the ground.

“ _Hoh_!” Arms spread and leg vertically raised like he feared the crippled demon would pounce, Chan leapt backwards to land on his hands, then sprung in another leap further back, rejoining the chi-wizard’s side. Gritting his teeth, Xiao Fung summoned all the strength he could to his lungs and windpipe immediately. He scrunched his eyes momentarily, then exhaled a gust of wind full-force, swollen throat deflating. Jackie Chan and his uncle both cried out as they were thrown backwards off their feet. Xiao Fung immediately turned his red-eyed head, redirecting the wind. It caught the two stranger just in time to make the shorter-haired one miss his target when his chi-weapon fired, sending them both flying. The longer-haired stranger flew and landed on his back. The other one’s head hit the side of a pickup that had remained parked, making him grunt loudly before he hit the earth. Smiling with his broad mouth, Xiao Fung slowly began picking himself up – which was a laborious process, every movement paining his weakened muscles thanks to the chi-spell’s after-effects. On the ground, Jade Chan opened her eyes, face smeared with fresh blood from her nose, glowering as she raised her head before aiming her snail-shell and firing. The chi-bolt missed Xiao Fung as he staggered along the wind-turbine’s wall to the door, quickly jamming the staff keys he possessed into the keyhole. He quickly had the door open and was staggering into the wind turbine. The Chan woman, who’d by now gotten into a sitting position, fired her chi-weapon again, but by then the Wind Demon was closing the door behind himself, leaving the chi-bolt to hit and dissipate on that.

With a flick of a switch, the fluorescent lights banished the darkness on the cylindrical ground floor, metal boxes with triangular yellow warning-signs present on every square metre of the cylindrical walls around Xiao Fung. The human demon groaned slightly as he staggered over to the cube-shaped chrome elevator box on his left, sliding its outside and then its inside doors open.

“Dean!” Jade was aware of Sam tending to his groaning brother by the pickup a distance away, but ignored them when she was sure they were alright. Getting to her feet, she swiped the blood from her face on the back of her wrist, glaring and gritting her teeth at where Xiao Fung had gone while Jackie sprinted forward behind her, bronze lamp in one arm. She was right behind him as they ran to the door.

Throwing it open, fluorescent white light and the whirring of machines greeted Jade’s senses as she and Jackie looked in through the doorway – they quickly spotted the overhead source of the whirring. A box-like chrome elevator without a shaft was ascending up the wind turbine’s shaft on a cable.

“Ladder,” Jade pointed and said to her uncle flatly, one second after she’d spotted their way up. Jackie nodded at her, face firm, before running to the circular ground floor’s opposite side and rapidly ascending the vertical metal ladder – Jade ran forward and starting scaling it right behind him. The floor grew rapidly further away from the Chans’ rears and feet as they ascended the cylindrical tube one-behind-the-other, the elevator-box moving onward a significant distance ahead of them. After several seconds climbing, Jade heard the clang of the door on the ground floor, heard Sam’s voice shout up to her and Jackie.

“Guys?!”

Set on her goal and not really seeing any need to reply, Jade kept going just behind her uncle, head craned and hard honey-brown eyes fixed towards the tower’s top. She figured – correctly – that Sam or Dean must’ve guessed where Xiao Fung was, as a chi-bolt fired near-vertically up to blast and dissipate on the elevator’s underside. No reaction, though she would’ve seen Xiao Fung inside the box scowling if not for the box’s opaque surfaces. Not two seconds later, Jade heard the extra sound of clattering on the rungs, as Dean started climbing from the ladder bottom, Sam following behind him. Jade and Jackie didn’t have to climb much further before, when Jackie was less than four metres from a circular metal ceiling that had a slot for ladder-users to pass through, Xiao Fung emerged from the elevator on the circular plate’s opposite side – he instantly ran to the slot. Jade could’ve heard the hiss as Xiao Fung inhaled and inflated his throat, before he unleashed a howling downward gust through the ladder-slot. Jade heard Jackie grunt above her as he held onto the ladder against the wind, the female Chan doing the same. The wind-breath was blowing ferociously at both Chans’ hair – prompting Jackie to move the lamp from his hand to between his teeth – and it threatened to make Jade’s skin on her face ripple. She immediately pressed her body tighter to the ladder’s rungs, bending one arm to hold a ring near her face, sure she would’ve lost her grip if she hadn’t readjusted herself that way.

Sam and Dean apparently weren’t expecting the wind-blast – the moment it hit them a few seconds after the Chans, Jade heard Dean’s grunt, and then the _clang_ and twin grunts as the hunters hit the ground-floor one-atop-the-other. Not a second behind them, Uncle Jackie yelled as he lost his grip. Jade gasped, heart threatening to leap into her mouth, as her uncle fell in a diagonal straight-line under the wind, passing her – before she saw him spring with his boots’ soles against the inside of the cylindrical wall into a diagonal trajectory back towards the ladder, grabbing on maybe ten feet below Jade’s boots. Lamp filling the space between his teeth, Jade’s uncle’s head was vertically craned and his eyes meeting hers as he lifted one hand in a thumbs-up. Turning her head back towards the gale-force wind, which forced her eyes shut, Jade tensed and braced her muscles before she raised her shell-holding arm and made it fire. The wind almost-instantly cut as Xiao Fung moved his head to avoid the blast.

Xiao Fung practically spun from the ladder-slot to the second ladder which went upwards, climbing it to the ceiling-grate twelve feet up and pushing it open. While Jade Chan was no doubt still climbing with little delay, Xiao Fung emerged into the wind turbine’s nacelle, going straight to the gearbox which occupied four-fifths of the close-roofed, fluorescent-lighted capsule’s cylindrical space. Removing the small glass vial he’d kept safe in his jeans’ pocket, Xiao Fung began chanting the incantations from memory.

“ _Summone decuplo procellae spumante sub manu mea_.” On a small, square panel of the giant machine, a sigil of white light faded into being – a triangle divided by a horizonal line, with three orbs surrounding it triangularly, each containing two opposing curving lines. “ _Sub manu mea_.” Xiao Fung threw the red powder from the vial at the glowing sigil, then blew a mortal-like amount of air into the powder-cloud. A magic shockwave exploding vertically outward from the sigil – not the kind of magic the Wind Demon knew from his own universe, being as chi-free as Lucifer’s magic though it was still just as different. In the bleached light of the cramped nacelle, Xiao Fung smirked widely.

* * *

Uncle was pacing – currently cold and alone in the the night, though fussing about that could wait – to shake off the cramp his leg had started getting since his nephew and niece had gone into the almost _magic-thin_ windmill. Patienty waiting until Jackie either returned with a canned demon or acted foolishly because he did not listen to Uncle, the skinny old man cast when faint white light suddenly came from in the sky, casting shadows on his face as he looked up.

“ _Ai ya_!” he said, staring as obviously-magic white light shone on the windmill’s three unmoving blades. After a pause, the light faded. Then the windmill’s blades started spinning, quickly gaining speed so they were shooting by anticlockwise in a blur. Uncle’s beady eyes above his glasses rolled and rolled faster and faster, the old man feeling like his eyeballs might soon fall from their sockets as he struggled and began to fail to keep up with the speeding blades.

* * *

Jade heard loud mechanical whirring and humming that hadn’t been filling the turbine before suddenly start up, as she emerged arms,-shoulder-and-head first through the ladder’s slot and hoisted herself the rest of the way in. Spotting the next passageway, she diagonally pointed her chi-shell like a gun, ready to blast the first speck of Xiao Fung she saw as she approached the ladder. She didn’t see a target just yet, and immediately started climbing the ladder, as quietly as she could.

Jade’s forehead and honey-brown eyes poked above the opened grille into the nacelle where the machinery was whirring discomfortingly-loudly. She immediately halted from ascending further, spotting Xiao Fung – back and the side of his arm angularly facing towards her, a quarter of his wide-mouthed grin visible on the squat human demon’s face – while bright-white light shone over all the machinery. Not the kind of white light that could be electronically-produced. Gritting her teeth, Jade dipped her head back onto the lower-level, seeing Jackie ascend through the ladder’s slot, grunting slightly, lamp returned to one of the hands whose arms he practically threw over the slot’s edge onto the metal floor. Jade signalled with an index finger to her lips for silence, then pointed upwards with the same finger. Registering, Jackie shot her a smirk in acknowledgement. Grateful, she looked back up towards the grille, chi-shell in hand.

She all but launched up into the nacelle, aimed her shell and fired without a sound. And the chibolt somehow _just_ missed, blasting and dissipating on the low-and-close cylindrical roof while the human demon reeled and grunted in surprise. Turning his face on her, Jade’s insides crawled uneasily as he restored his wide-mouth smirk and made a purr of a hum.

“Jade Chan, isn’t it?” Xiao Fung murmured, taking a step forward. Jade raised her shell again, ready to blast the moment his eyes turned red or he started inhaling. Instead, Xiao Fung launched himself at her with a yell. Eyes widening in surprise, Jade spung her leg out in a roundhouse kick just in time. Xiao Fung deflected her leg with an inside-block, and Jade immediately followed up her attack with a palm-strike aimed at Xiao Fung’s face which he again deflected. She attempted a couple more palm-strikes which Xiao Fung blocked, or neutralised when they met with a palm-strike of his own, before he instead suddenly halted her arm by grabbing her wrist – Jade cried out, the Wind Demon yanking her off her feet towards him too fast for her to counteract. She saw Xiao Fung’s waiting human hand next to his scowling face – raised in a palm strike – before the palm struck straight towards her. Jade grunted as she was thrown backwards – stars exploded across her vision when the back of her head hit curved metal framing in the ceiling mid-flight, and she fell flat on her chest to the floor.

“ _Yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ , _yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ …”

Xiao Fung turned his neckless head at the sound, dark-brown eyes widening and grin instantly falling. Jackie Chan’s head and upper-torso were above the nacelle entrance, holding the chi-magic lamp two-handed as he chanted.

“… _yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ …”

Human face hard, Xiao Fung sprung forward. Chan yelled, brown eyes widening, and tried to duck back down through the entrance. Xiao Fung fell onto his belly on the metal floor as he reached the grate, arm reaching through it. His large hand immediately grabbed the human’s shirt at the shoulder. Head craned, Chan grinned and chuckled nervously, raising a hand in a wave.

“Hello again,” he said, the seeming attempt to appease oddly reminding Xiao Fung of Shendu – admittedly, the Wind Demon had always hated his Fire Demon brother less than most of his siblings. Not a second after Chan had spoken, Xiao Fung hauled him up into the nacelle, screaming in surprise and protest. The human Wind Demon threw the mortal against the gearbox, its white glow briefly fading. The lamp, its glow fading, slid across the metal flooring.

“ _So good to see you again_ …” Xiao Fung purred darkly, with the same tone with which he addressed a lesser being he was interested in eating. On the floor nearby, Jade Chan moaned as she raised her head weakly, eyes bleary as she put a hand to her head.

“ _Tohru, have you been giving Uncle extra garlic again_ …?” she mumbled weakly, though Xiao Fung didn’t really listen. Xiao Fung simply took a couple steps backwards in the small nacelle from the Chans, unblinking dark-brown eyes never leaving them. Jackie Chan’s eyes widened in slight surprise, having obviously not been expecting the nonviolent display.

“Since you have found me, a demonstration appears in order,” the human demon purred – for indeed, he’d be quite happy to eliminate the nemesis of demon-sorcerers and his lackeys once and for all – before pushing his fist with his elbow bent, into the lower-button of the button station on the wall, baring his teeth in a wide grin. The electric-lighted capsule-dome enclosing the three figures immediately split in two, opening up like a blooming lotus flower to expose the night’s blackness behind and around them – the turbine’s rotor blades cycled past behind Xiao Fung’s back in blurs of motion, producing a sharp _whoosh_ once every single second, rotating in the wrong direction to what was normal. “Behold, the first armaments in the new Wind Kingdom Conquest!” Xiao Fung shouted triumphantly, grin gone with his dark seriousness as his dark-brown eyes held the Chans’ – he’d raised one human hand with all fingers but the littlest clenched in a fist. Then he sharply curled the little finger, bringing it into line with the others. Had anyone with wings like Hsi Wu or a modern flying vehicle been flying among the turbines’ heights, they would’ve seen bright-white light shine on the anticlockwise-spinning rotor-fan. It rapidly gained speed, passing the maximum safe speed by quite a distance, until it soon became a circular razor of white light from which emanated an eternal droning rumble, like something between a machine and rumbling earthquake. Then the fan gave off a flash that practically lit up the night for half-a-mile around it, a _boom_ like a thunderclap ushering forth, promptly followed by the sudden explosion of a typhoon-like howl. A few seconds later, what few pedestrians were out on the widest streets of Orient were being blown apart by roaring winds, which sent stray paper tumbling and flying – said pedestrians being a couple policemen, and an elderly lady on the opposite sidewalk, who fast-trotted screaming in the wind’s opposite direction as her hat was blown ahead – which car alarms went off one-by-one nearby and distantly. The cops’ police car was flashing its lights as it dragged in the winds on unmoving tyres along the tarmac.

The shining fan’s suction, though completely paling in comparison to the force of the fan’s outward wind, pulled at Jade and Jackie’s hair, the very first thing the female Chan did being to gasp in horror at the sight ahead. Memories of Tchang Zu’s lightning-strikes on Bozeman were flashing inside her brain, a second before Orient’s lights ahead of the translucent shining rotor began going out one small cluster at a time. Her honey-brown eyes shifted back to the Wind Demon – then in an automatic reflex, she re-raised and fired her chi-shell. Xiao Fung twisted his human body so the green chi-bolt missed – they weren’t exactly in open space, but with the nacelle’s roof opened they weren’t as confined as they were. Jackie’s yell carried out into the night, a second before he pounced upon the human demon in a flying kick, seemingly intending to knock him into the opened nacelle-dome or out into the night – Xiao Fung swerved his torso and grabbed Jackie’s kicking leg two-handed when it were passing by his balding head, shoving Jade’s uncle on.

“ _Jackie_!” Jade screamed, eyes going wide as she saw exactly where he was headed. A hand shot to and grabbed a curved white metallic piece’s edge just in time. Jackie was grunting furiously, brown eyes wide as the suction made his long hair billow away from his square-jawed face to behind him. His boots looked from a distance away like they must’ve been inches, a few feet at the most from the magic-amplified rotor. Jade saw what was coming when Xiao Fung suddenly blew his gale-force breath. Jackie’s hand slipped almost-immediately – a fraction-of-a-second before Jade’s arm shot out and grabbed his wrist before it could fly more than two feet ahead. The woman was half-amazed she’d caught her uncle that fast, but didn’t stop to marvel, grunting as she tried to both pull him back, and keep her feet planted in the gearbox’s crevices near the nacelle front, Xiao Fung’s howling wind blowing all around them. Jade instantly noticed when the human demon sharply increased his wind-breath’s force, seeming determined to push them into the rotors to be shredded to ribbons. But Jade, gritting her teeth while her hair billowed, half-turned her head into the wind and outstretched her free arm to fire her chi-shell. She saw Xiao Fung’s red eyes widen, windy mouth closing just before he leapt back, green blast dissipating on the metal floor a split-second later. Jade’s eyes remained on the Wind Demon while Jackie got his footing atop the gearbox, before promptly scanning the floor. She spotted the lamp – barely six feet away from where she was standing, the dark-bronze thing lying on its side on the floor. Jade sprung – in practically the same second that her feet had hit the nacelle’s floor, her hands scooped up the lamp and she pointed it.

“ _Demon_ wind-power is a pipe-dream, Xiao Fung!” she exclaimed, aware of the shining ultra-fast rotor behind her head, pulling at her neck-length hair. “ _You’re shutting it down now_!” Jade might’ve been surprised at the force with which she spoke and the rapid fury coming over her, if not for the circumstances forcing her mind to immediately focus on the current problem. Xiao Fung’s wide-mouthed face had an apathetic smirk.

“ _Nolite venti_ ,” he murmured, raising a giant fist and re-raising his pinkie – the gearbox filling most of the nacelle just next to him immediately shone again. In a couple seconds, the shining-white rotor in the night facing Orient, had slowed to the speed of a non-cursed turbine. “Surrender now, and I shall spare the humans that live nearby,” Xiao Fung said, purring voice and dark-brown eyes intent as he took a couple small steps forward. Jade might’ve immediately pointed the lamp and fired, but after Xiao Fung’s display, she held back – instead, her eyes briefly flit from him to the giant gearbox half-a-foot beside her, wondering if she could disable the spell.

Jackie replied for her, pointing a finger as he sternly exclaimed, “You aren’t going anywhere!”

“Going once, Chan!” Xiao Fung shouted severely but grinned widely at the two, eyes flashing red again seemingly with intent. “Live as my first slaves or die to mark the eve of war!”

“ _YEARGH_!” Jade’s eyes widened as Jackie leapt into battle from on the gearbox beside her, prompting her to raise the lamp and her chi-shell in either hand. Xiao Fung blocked Jackie’s flying kick with a humanly-large forearm, then swung his other arm’s fist for Jackie’s face, the man ducked to avoid it. With a cry, Jackie swept his leg out in a partial low spinning kick which brought the human demon’s legs out from under him – partial, in that he had to pull his in before his boot could smash into the nacelle’s wall by his side. Jade immediately began chanting.

“ _Yumoguigwaifaidizao_ , _yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …”

Chanting, Jade heard and felt the wind-suction as Xiao Fung, on his back, breathed in, a second before the human demon performed a kip-up which forced Jackie to stagger back towards Jade.

“… _yumoguigwaifaidizao_ …”

Her line of fire blocked, Jade pounced sideways so she was half-sitting atop the gearbox, lamp crackling in one hand while she fired her chi-shell with the other. The blast hit Xiao Fung square in the chest – the human demon flew backwards against the black night-sky, trajectory halted when his back met with the vertical aerial-shaft at the nacelle’s exterior rear. Red eyes opening, Xiao Fung unleashed his wind.

_BWOOM!_

Wind exploded against Jade and Jackie’s faces like they were standing in front of a jet turbine, almost-immediately throwing them backwards.

_BLAM!_

“ _Urgh_!” Xiao Fung cried out from the headshot, wind-breath instantly cutting though it had already made its blow. Hurtling angularly from the gearbox, Jade reached out a hand – her fingers grabbed the edge of the nacelle’s opened splitting-roof compartment against the night sky in time to stop her flying out into the open night. Jackie, flying towards the spinning rotor blades, by some feat only he could achieve managed to spring his boots’ soles back off one of the cutting blades in a millisecond and reverse his trajectory, landing in a crouch back on the nacelle floor. Dangling against the night sky, Jade could barely see Dean and then Sam quickly rushing through the entrance-grille into the nacelle, Dean’s chi-opossum in one hand as his eyes and both arms pointing towards the nacelle’s rear. Raised arms holding the opossum and a handgun, Dean fired a chi-shot – which made the bloody-foreheaded Wind Demon grunt loudly. Both hands holding onto the nacelle corner, Jade’s honey-brown eyes widened.

“The lamp!” She craned her head to look downwards. Despite the distance, her eyes and ears still managed to pick out the dark lamp smashing against the gravel with a loud clatter at the wind turbine’s foot, the force of its impact making the object bounce off the ground with a distant crash, arcing four feet in the air. Not far away on the distant ground, Uncle stood alone with his head craned and either hand by his mouth, yelling up at Jade.

“ _Jade! Hang in there_!”

“ _Duh_!” Jade shouted loudly to be heard, voice carrying in the night air, before she began hauling herself upwards to get a better grip on the opened roof.

“Hey.” Practically vaulting over the gearbox, Sam was at Jade’s side of the nacelle in a couple seconds, helping her get one foreleg hooked on the roof-compartment’s side.

“ _Summone_!” Xiao Fung yelled, outside the turbine’s observatory-roof, before Dean could fire a shot that should’ve interrupted the incantation. A sharp whir made Dean and Jackie turn their heads, the giant machinery a foot beside them seemingly responding to the incantation, making Jackie slightly gasp. Dean saw a sigil of white light briefly flash on a small square panel of the machinery. A rhythmic buzz began filling the air as the spinning rotor-blades shone white and began speeding up. Turning his cold face back to Xiao Fung, Dean fired his chi-opossum again. The shot missed as the neckless demon-sorcerer suddenly moved from his position by the aerial shaft, rushing sideways. Dean immediately rushed forwards, while behind him Jackie was leaping onto and off of the machinery to sidestep around Dean to their destination. Too late – they saw Xiao Fung’s back as he jumped and fell from sight, leaving black sky in the split-second before Jackie jumped forward. Finishing the rest of the run forward, Dean looked down, one second before the distant _thump_ of the Wind Demon crashing to earth resonated up to him. Dean briefly wondered if demon-sorcerers could die from a skyscraper-height fall – him and his dad had once killed a wendigo that way. Aware of the whirring witchy machinery, Dean didn’t stay long to find out, turning back into the turbine with Jackie following.

“We need to stop this thing, or a lot of people are gonna get hurt!” Jade shouted urgently to Dean from on the opposite side of the machinery.

“Let me.” Jackie promptly took Dean’s chi-opossum without further asking, aimed and fired a green energy-bolt. It dissipated on the whirring machine, the glowing sigil reappearing in response though otherwise nothing happened. Jackie gaped in surprise.

“I-It didn’t work?!” After a brief pause, he closed his eyes and lightly slapped a hand to the side of his head as if remembering something stupid. “Not a Chinese spell…” Not two seconds later, Jackie turned his head with a gasp as the whirring noise picked up, looking at where the turbine’s rotor-fan was rapidly spinning ever-faster. Dean wasn’t listening – he did the first best thing that was worth trying first. He quickly fired his handgun at the machinery, multiple times. The second and third gunshots each produced a shower of white sparks – making Jackie next to Dean recoil slightly – then a final white shower exploded violently out of the machinery’s top, intense white light flashing over Dean’s rugged features and Sam’s features opposite him. The machinery’s whir almost-immediately began to drop as smoke-wisps rose in front of Dean and Jackie’s faces. Dean took a look in the rotors’ direction to confirm the activity was dying down, before he – and Jackie, Sam and Jade on either side of the machinery – promptly moved towards the back of the nacelle. The explosion of sound from Xiao Fung unleashing his wind breath carried up to them – the wind made Uncle, standing on the ground, raise a skinny arm in front of his face while his white shirt’s hem and his messy hair shook in the wind. Dean saw Xiao Fung flying backwards under his own wind-breath – feet just above the ground – to perfectly land in front of another wind turbine’s door, the stout figure almost-immediately unlocking and throwing open the door to enter. It didn’t take a genius to guess what would be coming up next.

“Son of a _bitch_!” Dean growled, yelling and furiously slamming his hands down at the last word. _How the frig were they supposed to get all the way over there?!_

“Wait a second,” Sam quickly cut Dean’s explosion off, pointing at the wind turbine’s top. “Dean, you can shoot that from here!” When Dean looked a little longer at the other turbine’s nacelle – facing ninety-degrees from them – he saw it was missing roof-doors though all three rotor-fans were attached.

“Yeah? And what about the next turbine he blows himself away to?!”

“You got any better ideas right now?!” Jade exclaimed urgently by Sam, gesturing out with an arm. Dean didn’t say anything else. Almost immediately, she turned and said to Jackie, “One more thing – I dropped the lamp!”

“ _Jade_!” Dean found the timing of Uncle’s voice creepy. It was as if the skinny old Chinese man – now rising from a crouch at the wind turbine’s base to wave the lamp, head craned up – had heard what they’d just said. “Uncle cannot run after the demon all night! _You_ need this!”

“I will get down there and deal with Xiao Fung on the ground!” Jackie announced quickly, before turning and sprinting without another word.

“Right behind you!” Jade was vaulting over the machinery and on Jackie’s heels.

“I’m going with them – I’ve got an idea,” Sam said quickly, face-to-face with Dean, before running to follow Jackie and Jade from the turbine. Dean didn’t both questioning his brother, hazel eyes flitting from where the others were going back to the turbine ahead – shooting it now was an option, but he wanted to try shooting down the Cobblepot-like sonovabitch first.

When Jackie and then Jade reached the wind turbine’s main ladder, they slid down one-above-the-other like its vertical slide-rails like firemen out of a children’s cartoon – making Sam, upon reaching the ceiling slot above them, stare in surprise before he took the elevator down. It must’ve been thirty seconds before Jackie and Jade burst first out of the turbine’s door to join Uncle and take back the lamp. Sam was bursting out a few seconds behind the two, sprinting straight past Uncle, who’s head turned to track after the tall hunter. Sam didn’t see Uncle turning his head left and right before heading in the direction Jackie and Jade had gone in.

* * *

Xiao Fung didn’t see the Chans’ friend spying him across a vast distance as the human demon emerged into the roofless nacelle, putting himself in front of the gearbox.

“ _Summone decuplo procellae_ -”

Xiao Fung didn’t interrupt his chanting at the distant _bang_ of a gun, but the shower of explosion a little on his left did, making the wide-mouthed demon scowl furiously – one second before a second shot hit the back of his humanised head, drawing a small burst of blood. Xiao Fung’s balance was instantly lost as he staggered from the blow, though the bullet had been unable to pierce his human-shaped skull. He didn’t see he was navigating his legs to the nacelle’s roofless, knee-height edge until his legs caught, and he tumbled with a cry.

Xiao Fung fell for some time – during which Jackie and Jade Chan, running forward in the wind farm, stopped to watch the last few seconds of his descent before he crashed to earth with a noise. The human demon remained on his chest on the gravelly ground, limbs bent around him, for a few seconds, completely dazed. Then, awareness of his current whereabouts returning to the Wind Demon’s mind, he slowly began rising on his hands and legs in front of the two mortals, grunting all the way as he got his humanised body back to its feet. Xiao Fung lightly dusted off his grey shirt with either hand as he looked down at it, before raising his head to fix the Chans with a calm-mouthed if particularly-displeased glare. Both humans acted immediately, Jackie Chan pointing and chanting while Jade Chan raised and fired her chi-weapon.

“ _Yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao,-yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ …”

Xiao Fung leapt to avoid the green blast which dissipated on the turbine wall, touching down gracefully a metre away on all fours, similar to how his true form had stood. The human demon charged forwards, teeth grit inside his wide mouth’s parted lips.

“… _yu-mo-gui-gwai-fai-di-zao_ …”

Jade Chan fired a couple more green chi-blasts at Xiao Fung’s feet as he sprinted diagonally to her, before the human demon exhaled a small gale at her. The woman raised an arm to shield her face and scrunched her eyes, slowly sliding backwards no doubt as she fought to keep her heels planted in the ground.

“… _yu-mo-gui-gwai_ -” Chan’s eyes bulged as Xiao Fung came upon him, the human demon swinging a punch which Chan dodged, then immediately following with a roundhouse kick which Chan barely deflected with an outside-block in time. Holding the still-glowing lamp back as he positioned his torso slightly-sideways to his opponent, Chan attempted a palm-strike at the Wind Demon’s face, which Xiao Fung inside-locked in time. Leaping three feet backwards with the same grace as before – though he this time landed on two feet – Xiao Fung immediately began sucking in air with the distance he’d just put between himself and his opponents, then blew out with a noise. The cyclone-like wind collided with Jade Chan, who’d been raising her glowing chi-shell, first, blasting her straight backwards. The Wind Demon saw her chi-weapon flying and clatter along the wind-blown ground. Still blowing, Xiao Fung started turning his red-eyed head, aiming to blast Jackie Chan the same way – the human gasped, and sprinted horizontally in the opposite direction from the circling gust. Chan ran in a near-semicircle like that before he stood and suddenly leapt in the air, yelling as he aimed his boot at the Wind Demon in a flying kick. Xiao Fung’s red eyes widened, unable to shift his wind’s aim-

_THWACK!_

“ _Argh_!” Xiao Fung staggered backwards from Chan, who landed in a combative stance. Once he’d staggered far enough, hand on his face, Xiao Fung wiped away the warm blood that had leaked from his tiny human nose, glaring up at Chan.

* * *

Sam ran back towards the fight fast, leather-bound journal in hand and opened. He didn’t slow as he saw Uncle fire a chi-blast from his petrified lizard at Xiao Fung’s back, knocking the Wind Demon a few feet forward with a grunt, nearly falling on his hands and knees – nor when Xiao Fung almost-immediately blew his hurricane-like wind-breath in a circle to knock or force the Chan Clan back, up until the point a gunshot carried and a bullet pierced Xiao Fung’s sloping shoulder from above. Quickly getting to his feet, the demon-sorcerer leapt backwards and blew, and was propelled backwards like a Looney Tune shot from a catapult.

“If he’s jinxed all of these turbines, we can’t let him activate another one!” Jade turned her head from the direction she and Jackie were both glaring in to look at Jackie’s head, voice and face urgent, before the two promptly sprinted off. Sam, behind the two Chans’ backs before they ran after the Wind Demon, didn’t move to stop them but shouted down the old man further back instead.

“ _Hey, Uncle_!” Sam slowed sharply into a very-brief jog as he approached the skinny Chinese man, standing a foot or two above him. “Can you read the stuff in here?!”

Uncle raised his hands, palms facing skyward, as he shrieked furiously, “ _Why would Uncle_ -!”

“I’m looking for a counter-spell, just trust me!” Sam cut in urgently, not wanting to waste any time – indeed, with the briefest glance further into the dark wind farm, Sam saw Xiao Fung disappear into another wind turbine while Jackie and Jade sprinted fast after him. Uncle spent only one second afterwards looking at Sam’s face before he shifted closer to Sam’s side, looking at the open pages with intrigue while adjusting his small spectacles.

* * *

Jackie Chan and his niece ascended the new wind turbine just like in the first, the elevator-box which Xiao Fung was taking for its better speed rising ahead of the two. When the elevator reached the top, Xiao Fung all but forcefully shoved its outside-door to open faster as he pushed out, going straight to the ladder-top slot in the floor. His eyes were red as he blew typhoon-like wind down it, as he’d done in the first turbine. It made Jackie Chan, who was above the woman, halt as the wind beat his face viciously enough to make it ripple. In the several seconds the Wind Demon spent delaying the Chans’ pursuit, he had no idea of the chi-wizard and chi-less human outside examining his journal’s writings, exchanging questions and answers about what it said.

Xiao Fung threw the entrance-grille in the nacelle’s floor open with a harsh clatter, lifting his body through quickly. In the same moment Jackie Chan was ten rungs from his ladder’s top, Xiao Fung tore a metal box-cupboard free from the nacelle’s cylindrical-dome, two-handed, and he threw it with a violent sound atop the closed grille. The human demon immediately turned to the giant gearbox a foot in front of him.

“ _Summone decuplo procellae spumante sub manu mea_ …” The sigil made of light appeared on a small square panel, identically to on the other turbine’s. Then bright-white light shone on the entire machine like it were becoming a misshapen sun, silhouetting Xiao Fung’s squat human form, before with an invisible but audible flash of magic, the glow faded again. Xiao Fung gaped, wide-eyed and not grinning at all at the malfunctioned spell. _What…?!_

* * *

One after another, for more than a hundred-and-fifty degrees around, nearly half-a-dozen complete wind turbines’ tops and fans flashed with bright light as Sam turned his head, Uncle chanting next to him.

“ _In finem procellae spumante_ … _In finem procellae spumante_ … _In finem procellae spumante_ …” After a while of hearing the old man chant, Sam decided to intervene.

“Uh, Unc?” the tall hunter gently cut the skinny Chinese man’s repetition off, Uncle raising a bushy brow as he turned his head towards Sam slightly. “In my world, you usually only need to say the magic words once.” Uncle said nothing more, simply turning his head to look back up at the wind turbines.

* * *

Xiao Fung heard the metallic clatter as the box blocking the entrance-grille lifted half-an-inch with the force applied. The human demon was in a very sour mood, glowering at the weighted-down gateway where his human nemeses were trying to get through to him. But unlike some of his siblings, Xiao Fung had never been one overly ready to seek out an unnecessary confrontation, and he doubted he wanted to know what the new magic lamp of the Chans’ would do. So he immediately turned in the confined nacelle, and slammed his fist into the button control.

The long-haired stranger on the ground – and the shorter-haired one running from the first wind turbine – would’ve seen the turbine’s nacelle opening itself up. Xiao Fung caught a glimpse of the first stranger and the old chi-wizard as he stood and crouched atop the opened nacelle’s ledge. Then he jumped off. A sound of hurricane-like wind bursting broke the night’s quiet, and the wind blew slightly at the long-haired stranger and chi-wizard’s hair, making one of them squint their eyes. The tall human craned his head, before Xiao Fung landed thirty-five feet behind the humans’ backs in a crouch, just behind a parked vehicle. His dark-brown eyes were fixed on the two mortals ahead as he unbent his legs and stood. Xiao Fung quickly spotted the opened journal the chi-wizard held, confirming his worst fears and making him scowl. Seeing the shorter-haired man further back slow his run and aim a chi-weapon, Xiao Fung acted immediately. He smashed the glass window of the rusted parked Hummer he’d landed by – belonging to one of the human staff who often got a wagon-lift with one of the others – reaching in to undo the locking pin and pull the door open, hurriedly sliding in. The headlights came on as Xiao Fung started the car’s engine, and the tires screeched as he quickly swerved it and rode it, fast, out of the wind farm’s gates.

Dean lowered his chi-opossum, frustrated hazel eyes on the fleeing vehicle, and immediately ran forward. Sam was lowering his opened journal and watching the Wind Demon’s escape while Dean ran forward behind Sam and Uncle’s backs.

“Dammit!” the older hunter growled just before stopping behind them, making Sam turn his head. The brothers locked eyes. “What now, we just stand here?”

“Dean, he’s heading towards town, and we’ve already got cops tailing our car!” Sam responded quickly and pointedly – he’d barely finished the sentence before a skinny arm shot a two-fingered slap at his forehead, making him grunt and recoil. Dean was very surprised as his gaze shifted onto the other figure.

“You interrupt Uncle in the middle of sentence,” the skinny Chinese man chided the slightly bent-over hunter, making a derisive swishing-gesture with his slapping two fingers. “ _Respect your elders_!” Dean just arched his eyebrows, admittedly bemused that for once I wasn’t him getting forehead-slapped. As if Dean’s bemusement had signalled some kind of sixth sense in the old man… “ _One more thing_ -” His attention was now on Dean. “-you shoot _too slowly_!” Uncle leaned his goatish face into Dean’s personal space, leaning his stiff-backed body forward, breath that carried his yell stinking of garlic and mung-beans. “ _One more thing_ -” Dean could’ve winced at the way the old man emphasised those three words repeatedly – the old man raised a bent leg and began holding it two-handed. “-Uncle’s knees are getting _big cramp_ from standing!”

“Easy, Unc.” Jade came upon the old man’s side to gently soothe him, surprising Dean at how he hadn’t sensed her coming at all – Dean heard Jackie running forward behind him a couple seconds later. “Let’s get old yeller someplace he can get some comfortable shut-eye.” She immediately began gently leading Uncle away – Jackie started following in their stead, then Sam and Dean joined them.

“ _Ai ya_!” Uncle sighed like he dreaded such a comfortable someplace – he’d learned in the last several demon-sorcerer hunts that it was usually a motel, and not a four-star one at that. As they walked, Jade turned her head back to the two hunters, and Dean was surprised at the weirdly-warm look she was giving them out of one eye.

“Thanks for showing up when you did. And, uh-” Her honey-brown eyes shifted slightly-awkwardly for a split-second. “-Jackie and me shouldn’t have left you guys in a heap. We nearly got _creamed_ for it.”

“Yeah, well, teamwork and all,” Dean said offhandedly, while Jackie raised his eyebrows at the two hunters in interest.

“How did you reverse the Wind Demon’s spells?” the Chinese martial artist asked.

“He had an in-case-of-emergency in here,” Sam replied, opposite Dean from Jackie, raising the journal one-handed to show its sigil-decorated cover as he spoke. “He wasn’t using Chinese spells ‘cos he was using spells from _this_ world.”

“So, what, demon-sorcerers are getting their hands on Necronomicons?” Dean questioned – Sam’s slightly-furrowed eyebrows told Dean how unsure his brother was of that, a second before the sound of a distant siren approaching made the three men raise their heads, the hunters’ hazel eyes as alert as deer’s.

“How ‘bout we discuss that ten miles out of town?” Sam said quickly.

“Yeah,” Dean deadpanned, a second before the two men ran sideways past Jackie, leaving the Chinese man to turn his head after them in puzzlement. “ _Jade_!” Dean’s voice shouted at the woman and Uncle’s backs, making them turn their heads from their trajectory towards the wind farm’s gate.

Jackie’s face became horrified. “But that belongs to someone!” he cried in horror as Dean was reaching an arm through the open-a-crack window of the dark-blue Skylark sedan, pulling the locking pin and letting him and Sam open the side-doors. Jackie’s voice made Sam practically freeze and immediately look back at him, Dean following.

“Er…” the taller hunter started, in that voice he used when he’d been caught red-handed digging up a grave or something.

“How are we gonna explain _you_ to the cops?” Dean exclaimed quickly, gesturing with an arm. Dean saw a shift in Jackie’s face like he either couldn’t decide or had taken the point. “They’ll return our other car to the guy we leased it from, we can ditch this one-” He gestured without taking his eyes off Jackie at the Skylark. “-at the county-line and rent another.” Jackie gaped indecisively. Jade took another look with Uncle in the approaching sirens’ direction.

“Works for me!” the young woman said to Jackie, before promptly dragging Uncle by a skinny arm towards the car, Sam and Dean already getting in.

“ _Ai ya_! Uncle is _not Olympic athlete_!”


	15. Shanghai Moon Madness

Hsi Wu was sitting almost as still as a statue, eyes closed and breathing steady. The bespectacled sumo sitting with a book in hand in a chair facing Hsi Wu, was snoring softly.

Something shifted, Hsi Wu’s sixth sense detecting a new disturbance not afar as he tracked his kindred, but in his immediate vicinity; and he opened his dark-brown eyes. A mortal’s eye would’ve seen nothing in the storage shed but the slumbering chi-wizard, but the human Sky Demon only had to pull back his vision’s focus to see the pasty-white, pot-bellied man by the wall, dressed in a blue hat, jeans and a jacket that were stained with pale-grey smudges.

“Ah,” Hsi Wu sighed with a broad smile. “I was beginning to think you and I wouldn’t have a moment alone.” The bearded man’s countenance shifted, regarding the Sky Demon anew.

“ _You really shouldn’t a’ picked that, Chewie_.” Hsi Wu’s mind, and he suspected also the spirit’s mind, briefly went back to when the spirit had said those words in Pennsylvania, the surprised demon momentarily looking straight at him before the ambush had arrived. Hsi Wu’s mind then briefly flit over times the entity had been lurking invisible near Sam and Dean’s shoulders, exclaiming things unheard at them, having no idea that the demon-sorcerer could perceive him.

“You can see me,” the spirit murmured matter-of-factly in his gravelly voice. Hsi Wu was delighted – this entity, probably this universe’s equivalent to ghosts, apparently craved interaction he couldn’t easily have, which meant fun for Wu.

“I’ve felt you from the moment I arrived,” Hsi Wu replied. “Apart from when you vanished from the house for a day.”

“Glad to know Big Brother is watching,” the fat man drawled. Hsi Wu snickered.

“So you are stuck on your own immaterial plane,” the human demon murmured, smiling wickedly. “How long have you been that way for? A month? Longer?” The spirit’s lip slowly curled ever-so-slightly. “Ohhh!” Hsi Wu rasped elatedly – he was looking under the right bush.

“Go to hell,” the bearded man spat. Hsi Wu leaned backward in his chair, smiling. “So, _demon-sorcerers_ with glowing eyes from Bizarro World.”

“ _In the flesh_ ,” Hsi Wu replied sweetly. The bearded man mock-smiled at the veiled jab – he had as tough an outer-shell as his behaviour indicated. A bulb lit up in Hsi Wu’s mind though he didn’t let his face show the sudden change in thought. “How did you end up this way – _helpless_ , unable to commune with a single mortal?” The human demon’s nasty grin spread and his eyes glowed red.

“None of your damn business,” the bearded man growled. Hsi Wu chuckled as his eyes reverted to human-looking brown. “I obviously can’t mouth off to anyone, and since Belinda-ing your folks for as long as possible is in your best interest, maybe you’d like to tell me how something like me can beat something like you?”

“I don’t think so,” Hsi Wu rasped sourly, grimacing. He added in a slightly-higher pitch, “You have nothing to offer me.”

“I don’t,” the bearded man murmured, hazel eyes hard and unblinking. “But you’re _not_ interested in that reduced sentence for good behaviour?” Hsi Wu’s dark-brown eyes narrowed – he was dealing with a gambler who paid attention.

“I have confidence that I’m already earning my merits,” the human demon purred, smirking. That and he didn’t want this entity lowering the odds that Hsi Wu’s jailers might perish fighting his kindred. He shifted slightly, chains clinking. “But I’ll propose another trade.”

“What’s that?”

“My freedom-” Hsi Wu showed his palms emphatically. “-no strings attached; for locating the remaining demon-sorcerers and for making _you_ a new body.” The bearded man’s eyes practically lit up, interest gleaming.

A pause passed, before the bear-voiced spirit spoke.

“ _Go to hell_.” Hsi Wu’s only response was to comfortably readjust his sitting posture, dark-brown eyes remaining steely – the spirit had just given the demon more knowledge than he realised.

* * *

The dark-green ’65 Buick Electra rolled through sunny town’s central road, driving just below the speed limit.

“Any update on _Prince Lan_ or his moon-drill project?” Dean behind the wheel asked the passenger seat’s occupant.

“He’s attending an important conference today, that’s about it,” Jade murmured, eyes on the laptop between herself and the dashboard, whilst Sam and Jackie were leaning forward as if eagerly expecting some news. “But I don’t get it, why hasn’t Tso Lan gone to the moon already?”

“He can do that?” Dean asked in surprise, turning his head, and Jackie nodded – Dean was quick to return his eyes to the road lest Uncle reprimand him.

“He attempted to pull the moon from its orbit the first time we defeated him,” Jackie murmured gravely, looking back at the laptop screen, though Jade only-vaguely recalled the time her family had been involved with NASA.

“Power of the Moon Demon – control over gravity,” Uncle murmured airily in the Buick’s back.

“We should take a closer look at this lunar drill thing, find out what he’s up to,” Sam murmured.

“Right,” Dean said, slowly nodding his head – a smile was spreading stupidly on his face. “Which means we’re Double-Oh-Seven-ing into NASA.” Sam’s face pinched in exasperation, while Jade mentally stumbled over what they’d just said.

“Whoa, whoa, timeout,” she interjected, making a ‘T’ symbol with her arms, eyes wide. “You’re talking about breaking into the most famous space-launch centre in the United States?!” A pause passed – then Jade’s heart-shaped face broke into a smile. “ _Nice_.”

She heard Jackie groan in the backseat’s centre, could peripherally hear him slap a hand to his forehead despairingly. “I don’t suppose you and Sam both have clearance with the Space Centre’s staff?”

“‘Fraid not,” Sam murmured with the slightest hint of mischief. Beside Jade, Dean had broken into a full-blown grin, quietly chuckling.

“NASA, Sammy! Now we’re talking!”

* * *

Most were smartly-dressed amid the conference in the high-ceilinged hall, red curtain-clothes hanging from the walls. They mostly chatted, or sampled drink and snack from the hall’s white-clothed tables. The forty-something journalist approached the tall figure in black pants and a purple top from behind as he dismissed the businessman he’d finished speaking with.

“Pardon me, Your Grace.” As the journalist spoke, the tall man with the raven-black topknot turned, maintaining his straight back as his thin, oblong-shaped face with large ears and hollow cheekbones was revealed; thick mutton chops extending to his jawline, ending in two long curls which dangled off his face, a perfectly-circular bindi-like mark on his forehead, thick brows making piercing dark-brown eyes look stern as he regarded the young woman. He wore a traditional-looking purple tangzhuang, and he had a glass in hand which appeared undrunk.

“ _Ni hao_ ,” she greeted, bowing “I’m with the Astronomer Standard.”

“Your grasp of the Chinese greeting is somewhat lacking,” Tso Lan murmured in his deep voice; his stern frown and regal posture making the remark effective. “ _Nin hao_ is used for royalty and nobility.”

“I apologise,” the journalist murmured, lowering her eyes. She must’ve leapt on using Mandarin since it was modern China’s preferred language. “I wanted to ask you some questions for my paper.”

“Then ask,” Tso Lan murmured in a slightly lighter tone with a hand-wave.

“What brought you to make a leap from next to no Bhutanese involvement in space programs to backing NASA’s new lunar drilling project?”

“Bhutan is trapped between its past and the present reality, seeking to preserve its traditions and paying all the wrong prices,” Tso Lan fluidly replied. “In the modern world, international unity triumphs over sentimentality. As Dr. Yamamoto has said, precious resources such as water and gold lie under the moon’s surface, waiting to be mined, while the Earth’s resources dwindle.”

“You don’t think that Bhutan isn’t ready for such involvement, considering its core role in the project?” the journalist enquired.

“As I am directly involved in the lunar drill’s construction, I and the royal family will take responsibility for any technology malfunctions,” Tso Lan replied. “Having studied astronomy at institutions around the world, I am confident any such issues will not last long.”

“But this is your first major contribution to space travel?” the journalist pressed.

Not a second later, the voice of one of the staff called, “Everyone, it is now one o’clock! Anyone who wants to stay for Dr. Clint’s presentation about magnetic energy, or who wishes to stay for the evening break’s mini-toast sandwiches-” A few chuckles around the hall. “-I suggest you take your seats.”

“It appears we will have to conclude this interview here,” Tso Lan murmured with a small, polite smile on his human form’s slightly-crooked lips. Without another word, he stalked straight-backed past her, following the crowd’s direction as she watched him leave.

* * *

After Jade, Jackie (who looked particularly dismayed) and Uncle each got their fake-I.D. headshots taken, Sam got to work editing out the interdimensional travellers’ green chi-auras and incorporating the photos one at a time into a card layout.

While he worked, Jade could hear the angular-faced hunter speaking into his cellphone, “Yes. Kadrin chhe la.” He hung up. “Okay!” Sam said loudly enough for Jade and Dean to hear across the tropics-themed motel suite. “I just got reporters Mr. Lennon and Mr. Spacey booked to see _Prince Lan_ at his hotel’s restaurant for lunch tomorrow afternoon.”

“And while he is busy talking with the two of you, I will sneak into Cape Canaveral with Jade and Uncle, where we can learn what the Moon Demon is up to,” Jackie confirmed their plan, smiling as he lowered his chi mung bean sandwich which stood next to a takeaway box he’d gotten (chi-filled or not, he and Jade agreed they had no intention of eating nothing but mung beans and bread for however long they were hunting demons).

“How are those fake I.D.s coming?” Dean asked on one of the two beds, not taking his unblinking eyes off the TV programme while Jade was on the other bed’s edge.

“Actually, I just finished them,” Sam announced across the suite, standing and tucking his laptop under one arm. “I’m gonna run to the local internet café and get these printed.” Without another word, he turned and exited out the suite’s main door.

“You said this show would have evil spirits in it?” Jade asked as she turned from the TV to Dean, now pretty certain he’d lied as she frowned.

“ _Whaht_?” the hunter exclaimed immediately after biting off a mouthful of takeaway burrito. “ _No Ih dihdn’t_! _Cohme on, jusht look at Grachie and Talan_!”

“ _Tch_. Yeah, my heart’s bleeding…” Jade murmured sarcastically, her growing suspicion Dean had sought an excuse to watch this soap-op now confirmed as a reality.

“ _Jackie_!” Uncle’s voice screeched, slightly muffled behind the suite’s bathroom door. “ _Help Uncle_!”

Jade was surprised, and Jackie sighed as he stood and advanced forward. “What is it now, Uncle?!” The door opened, and Uncle stumbled into the doorway, slightly bent over, one skinny forearm gripping the doorframe while another held his abdomen.

“Uncle has _big_ stomach-cramp!” the old man complained.

“It is probably just bad wind,” Jackie said reasonably.

“Not exactly something Dr. Greene would treat you for, Unc,” Dean deadpanned gently.

“Plus, you’ve eaten nothing but those sandwiches for over a week!” Jade added, smiling reassuringly.

“ _Do not question digestive system_!” Uncle exclaimed, wagging his index finger.

“Ah- Okay, Uncle, I will drive you to the emergency room right away!” Jackie quickly relented, reaching towards the old man.

“I can do it,” Jade offered immediately, moving to get off the bed, all too eager to escape Dean’s favoured programme.

“It’s okay, Jade,” Jackie said dismissively with a glance at her as he and Uncle passed by. “I _hope_ -” He emphasised the word with an eye-roll. “-we’ll be back soon.” Jade watched them go with slightly-furrowed eyebrows, Jackie throwing the front door shut behind their exit. A pause passed before Jade got off the bed and walked to the TV set, switching it at the channel dial to _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_. Dean’s only response was to widen his eyes and lift his arms in a _What the hell_ look.

“What?” Jade purred mischievously, smirking as she returned to the bed. “You _don’t_ like Harrison Ford?”

“Whatever,” Dean murmured after a pause, slightly rolling his eyes.

About five minutes passed, at the end of which the two were still on their beds, eyes glued to the screen and chuckling at Indiana Jones’ “ _No ticket_ ”, when the far motel suite door flew open and Sam entered.

“Hey.” Laptop and paper sheets in hand, the tall hunter took note of the suite. “Where’s Jackie and Uncle?”

“Uncle had stomach problems, so Jackie took him to the emergency room,” Jade replied, sitting up. Her tone was simply, doubtful.

“Huh,” Sam responded, tuning and depositing his luggage on the suite’s tablet. Looking back over his shoulder, he said expectantly, “You gonna help me?”

“Nah, your hands are good enough for knitting sweaters, they should be good enough for pocket-sized leather,” Dean responded with the attention of an engrossed couch-potato. Sam responded with an eye-roll that could’ve been seen ten metres away, and Jade vacated her bed-seat and wound around Dean to help him with the fake I.D. work. “Hey, I’ve been thinking…” Jade and Sam turned their heads as Dean twisted into a sitting position on his bed’s edge. “…we could do our Cape homework a day early.”

Jade’s brows furrowed, and Sam looked confused. “Why?” Then his expression instantly shifted as if he’d pieced it together. “Dude-!”

Dean shrugged in a _What_ manner before Sam could say anything else. “It’s not like Sailor Moon isn’t busy, being a prince from wherever and all.”

“Patience is a virtue!” Sam snapped.

“Besides, if Tso Lan has something magic-related locked up at Cape Canaveral, we’ll need Uncle to suss it out,” Jade added, putting a hand on the table and frowning at the idea – she didn’t like it at all.

“I’m just saying – if we suss the place out in advance, we’ll know our way around if things get hairy,” Dean said, reminding Jade of a child trying to persuade their parents with logic to give them something they liked. Dean pointed with a raised hand. “You, me, Sam – we’re still a three-man team!” Chewing the inside of her cheek, Jade sighed – she knew what Dean really wanted, a chance to open his presents before Christmas with visiting NASA. Dean chose that moment to add, “I mean, c’mon, you’ve gotta know some stuff about chi-magic too, right?” Jade could’ve rolled her eyes but didn’t, while Sam sighed to the ceiling. She was unimpressed, but admittedly she’d always hoped Uncle would train her to be a chi-wizard (or chi-witch, she guessed), and she’d been pleased to have picked up a couple magic-tricks over the years. Dean, wearing a small smile which made Jade wonder if the soap-op had screwed with his neurons, held Jade’s gaze unblinkingly. She shifted her honey-brown eyes to Sam, and he met her gaze before his eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Oh, Jade …!” he groaned, exasperated.

“Proposal,” Jade said, looking back at Dean; “if Jackie and Uncle aren’t back in forty minutes, we’re going…”

“Come on,” Sam sighed.

“But if they come back before then…” Jade continued, letting the sentence hang for a second, before she flashed a devilish smile at Dean and said; “…every beer and burger anyone buys before we’ve beaten the last demon-sorcerer comes out of _your_ wallet.” Sam raised his eyebrows before looking at Dean. The elder Winchester’s hazel eyes were ever-so-slightly wide, and Jade seriously wondered how Dean was going to answer.

* * *

The Audi pulled into the parking lot of the Kennedy Space Centre’s Headquarters, the oblong white building studded with neat lines of windows looming above the vast lot against the twilight sky.

“The Moon Demon tries to hijack the moon twice on my watch, and both times there’s a free trip to Cape Canaveral in it – in two dimensions at that,” Jade murmured, riding shotgun with Dean while Sam leaned forward from the backseat. Sam noted she very much looked the part of a NASA technical staff-member with her dark-blue NASA cap and bright-blue shirt tucked into slim jeans, emphasising her helix-shaped torso – compared to his and Dean’s trenchcoats worn over scruffy suits.

“So, we gonna go over the plan again?” Sam questioned.

“I go in, I take a look at the moon drill with Uncle’s chi-detector spell-” Jade held up the small green petrified eel.

“You know how to use that thing?” Dean interrupted inquiringly.

“Not _this_ kind of weapon really, but I’ve used chi-spells before,” Jade replied. “How hard can it be?”

“While _we_ ,” Sam said, gesturing at Dean, “make sure Tso Lan doesn’t make one of his surprise visits.”

“Then when Jade has sussed out the drill, we hightail it to the hotel, you and me-” He gestured himself and Sam with a waving hand. “-keep him talking about the drill and _Bhutan_ -” He still emphasised the country’s name like it was alien. “-Jade gets close a room away and uses the lamp.”

“It might make a scene,” Jade quipped observingly. “We’ll probably have to jump out through a window once the demon’s in the can.”

“Yeah,” Sam murmured, eyes shifting – him and Dean had had simpler plans than this go in a tailspin before, and this elaborate plan wasn’t proving to be all that tidy despite Jade’s contribution. But from the way the Chans had described Tso Lan as one of the most powerful demon-sorcerers, the trio had agreed they wanted to get him imprisoned as soon as possible, screw making a scene.

“No time like the present to get this show on the road,” Jade murmured, smirking as she picked up the freshly store-bought toolbox from at her feet, pushed her side-door open and climbed out. The door shut, and Dean and Sam watched her back as she strode straight to the Headquarters, incognito. Sam’s mind wasn’t entirely at rest.

“This plan is gonna go wrong somewhere,” Dean said sourly.

* * *

Jade could honestly say she felt uneasy, walking through NASA with a fake I.D. around her neck. She’d ignored a couple South American countries’ laws in non-damaging ways on her college course, and she didn’t feel extremely bad about committing a crime in an alternate universe’s America; but she’d never committed anything like I.D. fraud before, and it now felt wrong in her gut. At every checkpoint with a security guard, she was worried the pass would have to be scanned into a machine instead of viewed by the staff, or the staff would take a closer look – but that didn’t happen.

She held up her headshot-featuring fake I.D. up at one of the last access points. The scrawny guy in security uniform simply nodded his head, then with a buzz, the airtight door opened. Smiling, the NASA cap-wearing, toolbox-carrying woman stepped past the doorway’s threshold. She passed down the oblong corridor with chrome, corrugated-metal walls and diagonal supports.

The hangar Jade stepped into after the corridor must’ve been a-hundred-and-fifty square feet wide, and the ceiling must’ve been almost as high – overhead white lights lighting the hangar, but it was still dim with shadows collecting in the gaps and crevices of the pieces of giant equipment scattered around. A shiver running up her spine as the shadows brought back a bad memory, Jade strode straight to what she assumed to be Prince Lan’s lunar drill. The device was like a satellite and landing module hybrid, stood atop a vast vehicle-ramp with wheels – it was fifteen feet tall and wide with four double-jointed module-legs, equipped with three harpoon-like drills. It had a satellite-like cylindrical body, with a chunk missing to expose the layers below the shell, and two solar-looking panels atop that. Jade put her toolbox down on the floor, opening it and immediately extracting the petrified, wavy-bodied eel – her face was firm and mood serious as she held the petrified thing up, glancing briefly over her shoulder.

“ _Biao ming xin ji_ , _biao ming xin ji_ , _biao ming xin ji_ …” As Jade chanted, wispy green chi-magic began glowing around the eel’s head, casting slight shadows on her face, before on the fourth repetition a chi-beam fired. It entered the opening on the module-satellite’s central body and blazed inside, like there was a miniature green star alive in there. Green light blazed over the entire device for a moment – then dark-blue suddenly burst through the bright-green haze like a tear opening, and with a _BOOM_ of energy, at least four translucent dark-chi tendrils broke off; crackling and undulating. Jade had one second to stare slack-jawed before she was lifted to the air. A console’s wheels likewise left the floor. Jade had spread her arms out almost like sails, locks and strands of her hair pointing upwards instead of down. Then, the undulating dark-chi mass gave a violent flash, and instantaneously receded to a crackling, translucent blue orb that half-filled the capsule. Jade fell with a cry. She hit the floor on her rear, and a console violently crashed six feet from her.

“This… is not good,” Jade murmured, troubled. Frowning and furrowing her pencil-thin brows, she reached to her toolbox and removed her snail-shell. She aimed it and fired at the dark-chi.

* * *

Dean, and Sam who’d climbed into the passenger seat, sat with one arm each resting on their side-doors’ window-sills, Sam slowly drumming his fingertips. Dean’s gaze shifted when a sleek black SUV rolled inward along the asphalt road running by the parking lot edge. The elder hunter shifted slightly, and Sam saw the same sight. The SUV was the front of an escort, and sandwiched between it and a second SUV was an equally-black Packard, turning into the parking lot entrance, before the Packard and its escort came to a stop practically in front of the building. It made Dean’s gut want to twist, reminded of one of Dick’s multiple-black-cars grand entrances. From either SUV, a burly-looking man in dark shades and a suit emerged, like presidential guards straight out of a thriller. One of the spooks opened the Packard’s side-door, and a tall figure who almost-instantly struck Dean as foreign emerged, standing almost unnaturally straight-backed – his black hair was in a topknot bun, and his long, nearly-oblong face looked slightly-cruel by the dark eyebrows and the prominent lines.

“Crap,” Sam murmured, before he and Dean threw their side-doors open and began emerging. They didn’t dare make a scene by sprinting, but the men in their suits were still in a slow-jog from the Audi, while Dean extracted his cellphone from his overcoat and speed-dialled.

“ _Dean_?” Jade’s voice said into his ear, a crackling noise filling the background.

“Tso Lan is here,” Dean said quickly and seriously, “do what you need to and get the hell out of dodge, _now_.” He immediately hung up. The tall man and his bodyguards were passing the Headquarters’ entrance’s threshold as Sam and Dean approached from behind.

Tso Lan’s humanised face was as cold and dark as ever as he passed the KSC Headquarters’ lobby entrance, long legs moving almost-weightlessly. His bodyguards – men of Asian descent whom he’d passed off as his fake identity’s escorts from Bhutan – flanked his back on either side. The fat human manning the checking-in booth on the left immediately stood and bowed. Tso Lan acknowledged him with a look – as oafish as that mortal was, he knew his courtesies, which pleased the Moon Demon.

“Uh, hey!” Tso Lan turned as the overcoat-clad men burst in behind him – the longer-haired man stopped himself short of running into the bodyguards, but the other was halted by the nearest bodyguard slapping a spring-loaded arm’s hand on his shoulder. _Journalists_ by their appearances.

“Hey, okay, we’re here because w-”

“Your grace,” the longer-haired human murmured humbly, dipping into a rushed if near-perfect forty-five degree standing bow. “I’m John Spacey – my friend and I were supposed to meet you at the hotel in two hours when we saw you here.”

“You should be more precise in your timing,” Tso Lan murmured darkly before the man could start another sentence. He didn’t appreciate modern humans’ lack of timing etiquette at all. “I will be at the hotel at the time I scheduled with you.” He turned his back and began moving on.

“Please, your grace, we saw you arriving just when we were leaving,” the long-haired man protested; “and we thought we could speak with you immediately.” The human Moon Demon halted, humming in brief thought.

“Then start speaking,” Tso Lan murmured as he turned back to the man, before resuming his course with his suited guards. The humans paused stupidly before moving to keep pace.

“So, why bring this Lunar Drill project to the U.S.?” the long-haired journalist asked, surpassing his partner until he was walking directly beside Tso Lan, notepad in hand. “Why not China or Russia?”

“The International Station’s success has taught me about the value of international cooperation,” Tso Lan replied, fixing the journalist with his severe gaze; “and I expect members of my family will already be interested in other businesses in the east.” While they spoke, the shorter-haired journalist lingered at the group’s rear, between and behind the bodyguards.

“Okay,” the long-haired journalist murmured, quickly scribbling on his notepad. “How much help have the United States’ resources been?”

“They are getting the job done,” Tso Lan replied calmly with the slightest dark undertone.

* * *

Jade’s good-chi beam blazed furiously against the dark-chi from the capsule. Her teeth were grit as she fought the fierce vibrations through her arms – even if destroying the drill now meant they’d lose the element of surprise once the Moon Demon entered and found the aftermath, with what she’d seen of the drill’s capabilities, she didn’t want Tso Lan using it in a fight. Despite her efforts, she cut off the chi-beam with a groan, and the capsule’s dark-chi in turn subsided slightly – her chi-shell alone wasn’t enough, not with Tso Lan approaching. She went back towards the corridor linking the hangar to the main facility.

Looking to see if anyone was approaching, Jade leaned through the hangar doorway to the long corridor she’d come from in the same second that the far door began opening to let a deep voice be heard beyond it. “-is why moon colonisation is-” Jade gasped and promptly ducked back into the hangar. “-closer than NASA believes.

“From this point, our business is concluded,” the tall demon-sorcerer, standing before the open doorway to the corridor, declared to Sam.

“Just a few more questions-?” Sam was cut off when a rough hand grabbed his shoulder – a bodyguard’s shades-masked face was a foot from his, features impassively-cold.

“Don’t take it personally men, you’re not the first to get the rough treatment,” a NASA security man at the desk said. Sam glanced towards Dean, who didn’t move as the other bodyguard was approaching him but gave Sam the tiniest shrug. Sam struck first with his left fist, and Dean promptly struck likewise with a kick, either brother taking on either bodyguard, whilst Tso Lan was entering the corridor with off-putting calmness.

“Hey, what the hell do-” Before the NASA security clerk had finished standing, Sam swung and sent him falling with a cry to the floor, out cold – the longer-haired hunter would’ve said a quick _sorry_ if not for the current situation. A bodyguard lunged at Sam before the hunter could counter him, tackling him to the floor.

Dean was mercilessly pummelling the other guard on the floor, although the second mook got a couple hits to Dean’s face in.

Sam got a leg under and kicked the bodyguard atop him off, which send the guard’s shades flying. As the bodyguard stopped staggering backwards, Sam got a clear look at his exposed eyes; cobweb-grey with dilated pupils, wormy veins surrounding either eye. Sam stared. The inhuman-eyed bodyguard charged to tackle him again. Sam sidestepped, grabbing him from behind, and threw him headfirst into the desk’s front corner. He went down with a cry. Not three seconds later, Dean knocked out the other bodyguard (who’d also lost his shades, revealing the same discoloured eyes). The brothers didn’t pause, both their gazes immediately on Tso Lan and drawing their guns. The regal, sophisticated demon-sorcerer was standing halfway down the corridor, piercing dark eyes glaring right back at the hunters. He hummed deeply, then he swiped a hand. Sam and Dean instantly went flying – except unlike all the telekinetic tosses they were used to, they just suddenly _moved_ as if by their very cores. Dean slammed into the corridor-doorway’s thick, metal frame, while Sam shot straight through like a basketball in the hoop, before Dean rolled off the rim and into the corridor.

The brothers hurtled, then suddenly halted inside the sterile, bright corridor. They were suspended off the floor in front of Tso Lan. The tall demon-sorcerer’s eyes were now all-red, glaring at them. Sam and Dean grunted and shifted their limbs – they could still freely move their limbs about, but were just _suspended_ like planets in orbit – though they kept their hazel eyes on the Moon Demon. Sam’s mind was rushing through ideas when a dry-sounding voice muttering indiscernibly caught Sam’s and Tso Lan’s attention. It was coming from outside the corridor’s entrance. The brothers heard the security desk’s phone being slammed down.

“Hey, whatever you’re doing, don’t come in here!” Sam yelled urgently to whoever was there, hoping his voice would also alert Jade in the hangar to the danger. Not a second later, the security desk clerk navigated around the desk into clear view, looking disturbingly unbothered by the sight he was walking towards – then his eyes turned black as the abyss. _Demon – the Earth-One kind Sam and Dean were familiar with._ Tso Lan swiped his arm, and the brothers’ bodies flew at bullet-train speed into a wall. Stars instantly exploded across Sam’s vision, and he was vaguely aware he and Dean were sliding _down_ the wall with normal gravity. Dazed as he was, Sam remembered the importance of what was happening, forcing his bleary eyes to look.

Tso Lan was focused on the possessed security-man, who stopped two feet short of passing Sam and Dean.

“A demon of Hell, on the earthly plane?” the human Moon Demon murmured curiously.

“Boy, you are _way_ out of the loop, Airbender,” the demon purred in a sing-song voice, removing from his belt what looked like a short-handled, triangular silver pike the length of a forearm. An angel blade, Sam and Dean realised, Sam wondering where the demon had gotten it.

“What do you want with me?” Tso Lan asked the Hell-demon darkly.

“The King downstairs wants to see you,” the black-eyed demon purred, pointing the blade tauntingly – while he spoke, two more figures were arriving behind him. “You and your friends got some answering to do for the mess you’ve been making of Hell. And some.” Tso Lan said nothing more, before curling his bony fingers. The lead demon gasped, eyes regaining their human appearance, as he shot towards the demon-sorcerer. The Moon Demon held his enemy suspended, an air of frightening indifference in Tso Lan’s red-eyed face and his posture – he curled his raised hand’s fingers tighter, and the Winchesters felt that subtle shift in the air that magic tended to cause to make the hairs stand on the backs of their necks. The Hell-demon writhed and struggled like something was wrapping around him, then opened his mouth and screamed, bright-orange light like an electrical fire illuminating the spaces and gaps in the body’s skeleton as the possessing demon died.

“Dean, come on!” Grabbing his brother, Sam made a run for the hangar – he seriously feared Tso Lan would stop them from passing, but he didn’t, perhaps because his attention was on the remaining demons. Behind Sam and Dean’s backs, the next two demons in NASA uniform ran forward, the nearest one to the Moon Demon snarling horribly.

Sam and Dean ran into the dimly-lit hangar, with more screams behind their backs.

A demon-possessed woman slammed to the bright corridor’s wall.

“Behold, my mastery of gravity!” the glowing-eyed Moon Demon exclaimed quickly. The final Hell-demon picked up the dropped blade and came at Tso Lan. The human Moon Demon turned to see it coming. The Hell-demon drove the blade to stab at Tso Lan’s arm or shoulder area, a fraction-of-a-second before Tso Lan caught his blade-holding wrist and sprained it hard enough for bone to audibly crack – the Hell-demon dropped the blade, and the human Moon Demon’s free hand caught it mid-fall. The black-eyed man didn’t cry out before Tso Lan threw him vertically-up. The body smashed to the ceiling, shattering an overhead light before gravity dragged him back to earth. Tso Lan grabbed the Hell-demon before he could hit the floor and threw him to the wall, face-first. The host body’s nose cracked very audibly upon impact, before the Hell-demon hit the floor near its dazed or dead comrades. Tso Lan loomed over them, glaring down dispassionately – his gestured with a hand, curling the long-nailed fingers as he extended his gravity powers and his very own chi to wrap the Hell-demon in invisible tendrils of his essence. The Hell-demon cried out as Tso Lan’s chi squeezed the dark essence in the possessed body. Once he had a firm grip, Tso Lan squeezed, and the Hell-demon screamed as it perished with a flare of orange light. Cold as ice, the human demon turned his gaze. One last security clerk-possessing demon was still alive, groaning on the floor, disoriented – it was quickly regaining its senses now, and scrambling sloppily to get back on its feet and flee. Hard eyes fixed on the fleeing Hell-demon’s back, Tso Lan lifted his left palm, and the 意 character encircled by smaller symbols flashed blue as the Moon Demon’s own chi fuelled the spell. Immediately, the Hell-demon halted in their run. They turned their head back to Tso Lan, eyes flashing black.

“Tell your King, the Earth belongs to the demon-sorcerers,” the Moon Demon murmured very-darkly, narrowing his now-humanlike eyes slightly. The Hell-demon slowly nodded in a trance-like state. Tso Lan deactivated the spell and lowered his arm – he watched indifferently as the Hell-demon gasped and bolted, then turned to the corridor's far exit with a contemplative hum.

The tall, gaunt human demon almost glided into the dim hangar. Gravitokinetically slamming the door shut with a hand-gesture, Tso Lan turned his head left and right as he moved among the huge machines – there was no-one in immediate sight, and very-slight smirk tugged at his crooked lips’ corners.

“Hiding only delays _the inevitable_ …”


End file.
